Let's review:
Gin-up Birtherism controversies via right-wing media? Obama releases birth certificate, makes them all look like whack-jobs.
Crap! Quick, get on Fox and raise some doubts about the legitimacy of the document! The latest polls show that only 3 percent of Americans still doubt that President Obama was born in the U.S., despite skeptical coverage of the event on Fox and other conservative media. Obama campaign sells birth certificate T-shirts and coffee mugs as a fund-raiser.
Fetishize the deficit and blame it on Obama? Resulting media attention points out that $7 trillion of current debt came from Dubya, and only $1.7 came from Obama -- who spent stimulous money to end the Bush recession's slide to disaster. Also reminds people that before Bush took over in 2001, the federal budget was on track to eliminate the entire national debt by 2008. Ouch.
Yeah, but his TARP program is a disaster! The Troubled Asset Relief Program was signed into law by President George Bush in October 2008.
Yeah, but his Obamacare system is socialism and Americans don't want it! Polls in 2010 showed that a majority of Americans either favored the proposed reform plan or felt that it should go farther and institute a Canadian-style single-payer "public option." By a 2-to-1 margin.
Yeah, but a majority opposed it! Um, stop saying that. When you take out progressives who opposed it because they recognized it as Mitt Romney's health care plan and felt it didn't go far enough, only a minority of Americans opposed federal health care reform in 2010.
OK, change the subject. Threaten a government shutdown to get more spending cuts! Congressional Budget Office analyzes the GOP-approved spending plan and announces that Boehner's Tea Party trophy actually increases 2011 fiscal year spending by $3 billion.
Pass a budget plan in the House and let GOP Majority Whip Eric Cantor speak to the media! Cantor, grinning like a triumphant schoolboy, gets up in front of God and everybody and announces that the House budget bill contains a sneaky proviso that says that the budget automatically becomes the law of the land if the government can't reach a deal and goes into shudown mode. Unfortunately for Cantor, the idea isn't even remotely constitutional. Even the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, was forced to admit that Cantor is essentially an intellectual dwarf on stilts.
Run on fiscal responsibility in the states but convert those wins into a national union-busting campaign? Recall elections in Wisconsin are on target to produce Democratic legislative majority in the state senate this summer. Blue-collar Americans flock to the Democratic party, energizing the union movement in America for the first time in decades.
Accuse Obama of ruining the economy? Fourteen consecutive months of private-sector job growth.
Call Obama soft? He orders a raid on Osama bin Laden's compound and kills him.
Say, 'Well, yeah, but the only reason Obama GOT bin Laden was because of Bush-era waterboarding!': CIA director writes letter clarifying that "enhanced interrogation" (Republican for "torture") did not contribute to the bin Laden operation; 2008 GOP presidential nominee calls on colleagues to stop making such idiotic claims.
Stick by your guns defending Bush's torture policy anyway? GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum tells a conservative radio audience that Sen. John McCain, who spent five years being tortured in a Vietnamese POW camp, doesn't understand enhanced interrogation. D'OH!
Crap! Raise doubts about whether the raid really happened! Despite right-wing media intimations of a hoax and cover-up, Al Qaeda puts the matter to rest by talking about the death of its leader.
Quick! Change the subject again! Obama invited a scary black rapper who hates police officers to the White House! All hands on deck, partisan media! Some comedian named Jon Stewart writes a rap about how transparently hypocritical you are.
Nobody insults Fox News like that! Get Stewart on O'Reilly for a 'debate!' Stewart makes O'Reilly looks silly. On his own show.
Make a big media push behind the idea that the Ryan budget plan is "brave" and "bold"? Democrats point out that it would kill Medicare as we know it.
Say, 'Yeah, but it gives seniors vouchers': Seniors go nuts at town halls, polls show massive opposition to any attempt to do away with the system.
Argue that we have to do everything we can to reduce the deficit? Democrats offer to cut $4 billion in subsidies to oil companies, which happen to be celebrating record profits in 2011.
Ignore that politically damning offer to cut oil-company subsidies and hope it goes away? Democrats in the Senate force a vote on it anyway. All but three Democrats vote in favor of cutting the corporate welfare program. All but two Republicans vote to keep subsidizing oil companies' record profits.
Enough with the oil subsidies, blame Obama for high gas prices! Exxon chief testifies before Congress that unregulated market speculation adds between 30 to 40 percent to the cost of a barrell of crude.
OK, scratch that, go back to the deficit. We've got to cut spending! Obama calls for deficit reduction based on a combination of spending cuts and tax increases on the rich. Annoying economists point out that costs of this year's GOP tax cuts ($42 billion) exceed the value of all their 2011 spending cuts ($38 billion).
You can't increase taxes on the rich! Come on, Americans, that's where your jobs come from! Rich people! Poll finds that 74 percent of American voters support tax increases for households earning more than $250,000 a year.
Wait, do the math. We can't win in 2012 if we run on gutting Medicare, cutting taxes for the rich, busting unions and deregulating oil companies and market speculation. Memo from Fox News and your unregulated Super-PAC paymasters: No retreat, no surrender. Dissent from the party line will not be tolerated.
OK, we can do this. We'll just tell voters that Democrats want to kill Medicare, too. In the special election to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Republican Congressman Chris Lee after a Craigslist sex scandal, the reliably red New York 26th Congressional District shifts to "toss-up" in a race that turns on one issue: Medicare.
There's got to be a way around this ideological purity test on Medicare.... Newt Gingrich calls it "right-wing social engineering" on Meet The Press, and after less than 24 hours of relentless hounding is forced to go around apologizing to everyone in America who wears a red tie.
At least we still have social issues! Family values! Sen. John Ensign resigns after a particularly creepy sex scandal. After the breakup of his marriage, former California Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger admits to fathering a child with a staffer a decade ago.
We'll go after gay marriage! People hate gay marriage! New Gallup poll finds that 53 percent of Americans now support same-sex marriage.
Crap! How about Planned Parenthood? We'll cut funding for Planned Parenthood! Ninety percent of that money goes to abortion! Actually, 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's budget goes to abortion. The rest goes for stuff like pap smears and other preventative health care services for women.
Crap! Sen. Jon Kyl said that on the floor of the Senate! It's on the official record! Come up with a statement that gets us out of this! Kyl's office issues a press release that says the Senator's claim was "not intended to be a factual statement." Comedian Stephen Colbert launches the Twitter hashtag #notintendedtobeafactualstatement. In a matter of hours, it's Twitter's top trending topic. Thousands of Tweeters spend hours entertaining each other by lampooning GOP buffoonery.
Pap smears? Preventative health care for women? That's wasteful government spending! The brown-haired guy on Fox and Friends who isn't Steve Doocy says you can get pap smears at Walgreens. Walgreens says that isn't true, either.
Well, at least we've still got that old-time religion! Evangelical radio host predicts that the Rapture will occur on Saturday, May 21, at 6 p.m,. with a worldwide earthquake that will travel around the globe at a rate of one time zone per hour, removing all Christians to heaven.
The Rapture. Maybe that will get us out of this mess. We'll see.Check back tomorrow.
You missed the Republican strategy that just might work... stand in the way of anything to do with creating jobs. Make sure the unemployment rate stays over 8%, and maybe even put the economy into a double-dip. Then say "it's the economy, stupid!" and blame Obama.
Then they just have to get someone who is Not Insane through the Republican Primary gauntlet. Tough, I know, but possible.
Then they've got a chance.
Posted by: SteveZStein | Friday, May 20, 2011 at 20:34