It appears that the Republican leadership in congress may be continuing down the road of underestimating President Obama’s mastery of information disintermediation as a tool for campaigning and governing. Looking at House Republican Leader John Boehner’s ridiculous approach to his first weekly radio address it is hard to come to any other conclusion.
As discussed on the Angry Bear Blog this morning, based on an article by Steve Benen in the Washington Monthly, Boehner is praying for a lot of cognitive dissonance. However, bloggers and reporters all over quick to point out that Boehner is full of it (it being what I like to refer to as completely unadulterated crap but, hey, form your own opinion on that one). Benen writes:
In the first weekly Republican radio address under the new administration, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) touted the GOP's vision for an economic recovery.
"Our plan is rooted in the philosophy that we cannot borrow and spend our way back to prosperity," Boehner stated.
The minority leader said the package authored by congressional Democrats was "chock-full of government programs and projects," noting a Congressional Budget Office report that projected less than half of the $355 billion that House Democrats would spend to create jobs through infrastructure programs and other efforts is likely to be used before the end of fiscal 2010.
Let's see, where to start. First, the CBO report Boehner is so fond of doesn't really exist. Second, Boehner has supported nothing but "borrow and spend" policies since the moment he arrived in Congress, which helps explain his votes in support of budgets that produced the largest deficits in American history.
Third, if the administration and the congressional majority listened to Boehner and relied on weak-stimulus tax cuts to improve the economy, isn't that necessarily a "borrow and spend" policy? And if tax cuts were the magic bullet, and Bush and Boehner cut taxes over the last eight years, shouldn't the economy be in great shape? (Indeed, it's this thinking that led the National Republican Congressional Committee to argue, as recently as yesterday, "Thanks to Republican economic policies, the U.S. economy is robust and job creation is strong.")
And fourth, of course the Democratic plan is "chock-full of government programs and projects." That's the point.
Boehner, and the rest of the leadership, are not prepared for Obama on a tactical or strategic level. In fairness, Boehner's address was also a YouTube address which as of this writing has been viewed just over 5,000 times. President Obama’s address has been viewed almost 800,000 times. More importantly, Obama directs viewers/listners to the administrations website, www.recovery.gov, where they intend to offer extensive disclosure on how the money is being spent.
Political maneuvering and spinning of the facts has existed as long as man but Obama's continual ability to get right to the people by sidestepping traditional means continues to astound. Far too much has already been written about his use of technology etc so I will spare the details but, even with all that analysis, its not clear that the Republican party has figured it out. Even with master wordsmiths like Karl Rove and Frank Lutz it's going to take a lot more work than they are used to overcome the information flow that Obama has mastered. Forcing all of these characters to tell the truth (at least more of the time) can only be good for Americans (Dems and Republicans).
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