How to Lose an Election Without Really Trying
By FRANK RICH
NYT
COULD George W. Bush be a kind of Gipper-in-reverse and win yet one more for the Democrats? Clearly this White House sees him as the gift that will keep on giving. The 2010 campaign against the Bush administration is in full cry, with President Obama leading the charge. The Republicans are “betting on amnesia,” he confidently told the claque at a recent fund-raiser. “They don’t have a single idea that’s different from George Bush’s ideas.” It’s now the incessant party line.
Sounds plausible, but it’s Obama who’s on the wrong side of that bet, to his own political peril.
Betting on amnesia is almost always a winning, not a losing, wager in America. Angry demonstrators at health care town-hall meetings didn’t remember that Medicare is a government program, and fewer and fewer voters of both parties recall that the widely loathed TARP was a Bush administration creation supported by the G.O.P. Congressional leadership. So many Republicans don’t know Obama is a natural citizen — 41 percent in a poll last week — that we must (charitably) assume some of them have forgotten that Hawaii was granted statehood. The G.O.P. chairman is sufficiently afflicted with amnesia that he matter-of-factly regaled an audience with the counterfactual observation that the war in Afghanistan, Bush’s immediate response to 9/11, began under Obama.
The president is also wrong when he says that every single current G.O.P. idea is a Bush idea. Many are not. And those that are not are far more radical.
(More here.)
NYT
COULD George W. Bush be a kind of Gipper-in-reverse and win yet one more for the Democrats? Clearly this White House sees him as the gift that will keep on giving. The 2010 campaign against the Bush administration is in full cry, with President Obama leading the charge. The Republicans are “betting on amnesia,” he confidently told the claque at a recent fund-raiser. “They don’t have a single idea that’s different from George Bush’s ideas.” It’s now the incessant party line.
Sounds plausible, but it’s Obama who’s on the wrong side of that bet, to his own political peril.
Betting on amnesia is almost always a winning, not a losing, wager in America. Angry demonstrators at health care town-hall meetings didn’t remember that Medicare is a government program, and fewer and fewer voters of both parties recall that the widely loathed TARP was a Bush administration creation supported by the G.O.P. Congressional leadership. So many Republicans don’t know Obama is a natural citizen — 41 percent in a poll last week — that we must (charitably) assume some of them have forgotten that Hawaii was granted statehood. The G.O.P. chairman is sufficiently afflicted with amnesia that he matter-of-factly regaled an audience with the counterfactual observation that the war in Afghanistan, Bush’s immediate response to 9/11, began under Obama.
The president is also wrong when he says that every single current G.O.P. idea is a Bush idea. Many are not. And those that are not are far more radical.
(More here.)
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2 Comments:
For a party that constantly sounds the drumbeat of being the party of the future, they spend an awful lot of time blaming George Bush or Republicans and the 'failed policies of the past' ignoring the fact that the new policies are actually making things worse and represent not just failed policies, but failed philosophies.
See, Democrats think people are so stupid they wouldn't make this kind of connection. Listen to AM950 in the Twin Cities market - their key tag line is a quote of President Obama saying 'we must be the party of tomorrow' and then they have Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, Ed Schultz, et al...who just blame, blame, blame Bush. You can listen to AM950 for hours - which I do often - and the hosts never engage in dialog where you might actually learn something other than how bad Bush and Republicans are.
The Democrat fatal conceit is that people have no appetite for full-throated liberalism, outright bribes to favored constituents, and a president who is the most politically calculating president they have seen in their lifetimes. Now, the Obama Administration is set to order Freddie and Fannie to forgive billions of dollars in mortgages hoping for another political calculation hoping that the number of grateful Americans is more than those Americans offended by having to pay their own mortgage, plus that of their neighbors with the hope that another bribe to the American electorate can stave off the expected massive - if not historic - Democrat losses in November.
The recipe for losing an election is thus (Obamanomics): spend what we don’t have now, run up debt like crazy, and hope that a momentary spike will translate into political success.
Good luck in the mid-terms! You're going to need it!
Amnesia? It is my belief that Americans are finally waking up and taking note of the (from Martin Gross, "Government Racket"): 70 programs attempting to address teen drug abuse, 160 job-training programs, 50 hoemless assistance programs, 27 programs to avert teen pregnancy, 90 programs on early childhood development, 12 federal agencies responsible for hundreds of community development programs, all spending money at a mind-boggling rate, such that no one can keep track. An IRS that could not verify $3 billion of its expenses, $60 billion in Medicare fraud and the list goes on.
I did not vote for Bush the 2nd time around and urged others to do the same. Bush made a number of mistakes, not the least of which was the growth in spending. I urge Vos Veras to acknowledge that Democrats took over Congress on January 4, 2007. How long can liberal/progressives continue to blame Bush?
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