Chutzpah 101: Karl Rove faults Obama for taking steps to solve the problems Rove helped create

by Leigh Pomeroy

It's fascinating to me how the Republican Party, after eight years of financial and regulatory mismanagement, can come back with a straight face and criticize the current emergency measures President Obama must take to keep the country from sinking even further into the recessionary tar pit the Bush White House and Republican Congress have created.

It is even more amazing when one of their spokesmen — and I don't mean Rush Limbaugh — has by many accounts committed treason — e.g., by revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative, among perhaps several other offenses.

Yes, the lengths to which Obama and Congress must go to free up capital as a means to revitalize not just the country's but the world's economy is indeed scary. No one wants to go into this much debt and no one would prefer to take such extreme measures. But what are the alternatives?

Sadly, the Republicans haven't offered any solutions except more of the same: tax cuts for the rich. Didn't such policies help lead us into this morass?

I don't know whether I'm happy or sad to say that I was one of those arguing against tax cuts and in favor of capital and infrastructure spending as a means to pull out of the economic downturn triggered by 9/11. But I'm definitely sad to say that I and others who argued the same got nowhere amidst the "cut taxes" frenzy coupled with the wasteful spending on the Iraq war.

But "I told you so" doesn't deal with today's problems.

We are indeed in the midst of a huge economic experiment, but one that has some basis in history. As has been eloquently explained by Paul Krugman, Robert Reich and many other prominent economists, one's first choice is not to borrow and spend our way out of economic stagnation. But when all other means have been exhausted, including reducing interest rates to near zero, what other alternatives are there?

If Karl Rove and Republicans of that ilk had spent their formidable skills towards bettering the country instead of attempting to create a permanent Republican Party majority, then perhaps they would not have have been so successful at destroying both.

And if they had acted accordingly — who knows? — they may have succeeded in putting both themselves and our nation in a much better position than either one is today.

Obama Gives the GOP an Opening

By KARL ROVE
Wall Street Journal

President Barack Obama and his West Wing lieutenants are playing on the world's largest stage, yet act as if no one is watching them when they contradict their campaign promises. That behavior is unwittingly giving the Republicans an opening.

For example, Team Obama thinks the president, having spent a good portion of the campaign decrying the $2.9 trillion in deficits during the Bush years, can now double the national debt held by the public in 10 years. Having condemned earmarks during the campaign, the Obama administration now believes it can wave through 8,500 of them in the omnibus-spending bill, part of the biggest spending increase since World War II.

The rest of the Rove article is here.