Republicans made clear on Sunday that higher taxes on the wealthy were not acceptable to them. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said:
It’s a bad thing to do in the middle of an economic downturn …”
(Laughter!) No, no, Mitch-you-stitch! Definitely not in a downturn. And certainly not in an upturn. And never, ever even in a “no turn.”
“I pledge allegiance to the Congressional Republican Caucus, and to the Obstinacy for which it stands, one Party above Country, with License and Avarice for us—and Jack for the rest of America.”
All the evidence you need to dismiss self-serving Democratic “centrist” gas bags saying Massachusetts means Ds have to abandon the “left,” is this poll in Daily Kos. It shows that 45 percent of Democrat voters do not now expect that they’ll bother to vote in the November congressional elections. Forty-five percent!
Move closer to the Republicans–as Lieberman, Bayh and Baucus want to do? Oh, sure! The same poll–which documents disillusionment with congressional Ds (40% approve; 55% disapprove) also shows that they loathe congressional Rs (16% approve, 66% disapprove).
The first thing they teach you in practical politics is to remember your base. Flirt with the other side, and they’ll abandon you. Politics 101. Reagan understood. I fought him all the way, but his strength was he meant what he said and said what he meant. As Tip O’Neill used to say, politics ain’t bean bag. So stop already wooing Republican senators and congressmen. They want to destroy you and your party, Mr. President. Time to be the man and party that inspired the nation just a year ago but, incredibly, are now turning off that nation.
Pennsylvania Seventeen Hundred–what did you learn Tuesday?
From an article in the Open Left Blog, by my friend, David Sirota:
“Political headlines of late have all been some version of Dow Jones Newswire’s recent scream: ‘CBO Puts Health Care Bill Cost at $1 Trillion.’ That’s as true as an Enron press release touting only one side of the company’s ledger. Though the bill’s expenditure do total $1 trillion, the CBO confirms its other provisons recover more than that, meaning headlines should read, ‘CBO Says Health Bill Saves $110 Billion’.”
To really get your blood boilding, read David’s detailed examples of media malfeasance here.
