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Jewish World Review
Feb 12, 2012/ 19 Shevat, 5772
Are GOPers playing right into Obama's hands?
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
“How many of you,” Scott Rasmussen asked the crowd at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, “have ever mocked or made fun of the president’s call for hope and change? Raise your hands.”
Most people in the Marriott Wardman Park hotel ballroom raised their hands. There were cheers and whoops. “With all due respect,” the conservative pollster and commentator told them, “I’d like to say that’s really stupid.” This time, there was uncomfortable laughter. “Voters are looking for hope and change as much today as they were in 2008,” Rasmussen explained, and “you ought to be encouraging Republican candidates, people you support, to offer that positive step forward.” Rasmussen had put his finger on a major problem for Republicans in 2012, and conservatives in particular: At a time when the national mood has begun to improve, they remain nattering nabobs of negativism. At CPAC, any hint of a “positive step” was buried in vitriol. This worked well for Republicans in 2010, because it matched the sour mood of the electorate. But now, with optimism and confidence finally on the rise, Republicans are left with an anger management problem. They risk leaving the impression that they are rooting against an economic recovery. Take, for example, the speech to CPAC by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader. Among his criticisms of the Obama administration: It “made an art form out of the orchestrated attack”; it will “go after anybody or any organization they think is standing in their way”; it releases “the liberal thugs” on opponents; it “used the resources of the government itself to intimidate or silence those who question or oppose it”; it engages in “attacking private citizens or groups for the supposed crime of turning a profit”; it takes it on itself to “dig through other people’s tax returns”; and it has no higher priority “than picking on Fox News.” “The president seems to have forgotten . . . that he was elected to be president of the United States, not the Occupy Wall Street fan club,” McConnell lectured, spitting out the words. The unrelenting anger in the ballroom was an extension of what’s been happening on the campaign trail. In the week preceding the Florida Republican primary, 92 percent of the political ads were negative, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group. There was only one positive ad for Mitt Romney — and it was in Spanish. The Republican candidates for president visited CPAC on Friday to deliver more of the same: “We’re going to win by making Barack Obama and his failed policies the issue in this race” (Rick Santorum); “History will record the Obama presidency as the last gasp of liberalism’s great failure” (Romney); and “My goal, with your help, is that by the time President Obama lands in Chicago, we will have repudiated at least 40 percent of his government on the opening day” (Newt Gingrich). The dour message has contributed to low voter turnout and an enthusiasm gap among GOP voters — a worrisome development that the Washington Times’ Ralph Hallow tried to warn the CPAC participants about. “None of these things I see are particularly good,” he said during one of the conference panels. “Intensity and enthusiasm about voting is now with the Democrats.” On the same CPAC panel, conservative activist Ralph Reed argued that “it isn’t going to be enough to be anti-Obama. . . . We have to have a forward-leaning, positive conservative reform agenda.” But at the moment, the message remains backward-looking and negative. At CPAC, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) used his speech to decry a “totalitarian state that’s descending upon us” and to assert the existence of the administration’s “Stasi troops” — a reference to the East German secret police. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) claimed, “Our country has never been in as much trouble as we’re in today, and I’m not exaggerating.” Speaker John Boehner recalled his defiant stand against Obamacare on the House floor: “Hell no, you can’t!” And former presidential candidate Herman Cain argued that “stupid people are ruining America.” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) even dismissed the significance of the death of Osama bin Laden, the fall of Moammar Gaddafi and the birth of the Arab Spring. They are “tactical successes” that pale against the “mess that Barack Obama has created,” she said. On another CPAC panel, conservative commentators were asked to respond to conservative columnist David Brooks’s argument that Romney needs “to actually have some big policies” rather than “cruising on a bad economy.” Radio host Roger Hedgecock disagreed. “We know that this economy is not recovering,” he said. McConnell was similarly grim. “Last week’s jobs report happened in spite of the president’s policies, not because of them,” he told the gathering. “It’s the Obama economy now. And we’re not going to let people forget it.” Such nattering is exactly what Obama needs. unemployment rate and slow economic growth should combine to doom Obama. But historical patterns do not take into account an opponent who says he enjoys firing people. This week’s Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Obama with a nine-point lead over Romney and a 15-point lead over Gingrich. And political handicapper Charlie Cook wrote Tuesday about a fundamental shift in Obama’s prospects, as the GOP position retreats from “cautiously optimistic” to “uncertainty.” In politics, it’s better to be lucky than good, and Obama has come into an unexpectedly large quantity of luck. Five straight monthly drops in the unemployment rate have boosted consumer confidence and stock markets. And, while Obama does nothing more than sit and watch, his opponents are alienating the electorate. Conservative blogger Erick Erickson summed upthe disenchantment this week when he said that he would rather have the “sweet meteor of death than any of the candidates left in the race.” Santorum’s unexpected revival in Tuesday’s primaries — essentially a protest vote — indicates that Erickson has plenty of company. While Romney embraces the birther billionaire Donald Trump, he has ceded to Obama the political center. The day after Romney indelicately announced that he was “not concerned about the very poor,” Obama spoke at the Nation
al Prayer Breakfast about his affection for the Rev. Billy Graham and about “the biblical call to care for the least of these — for the poor; for those at the margins of our society.” The run of luck has left Obama in buoyant spirits, which were on display in the White House on Tuesday. Leaving aside the crisis in Syria and a dispute with the Catholic bishops, he lingered at the science fair to talk to the teen inventors and try their toys, including a robot made from a trash can (“I’m trying to figure out how you got through the metal detectors,” Obama commented) and sugar packets made from dissolving packaging (“Tell me when I can buy stock,” the president said). He turned to three girls from Texas who had built rockets, including one with a cherry-blossom design. “This is not a tough-looking rocket,” the president said, “with the flowers and birds and stuff. . . . You just don’t usually see rockets this pretty.” The president then recounted for the girls his own experiment of dropping eggs with Sasha from the Truman Balcony. “I’m hip to the whole egg thing,” he said, before agreeing to the girls’ request for a group hug. For a man who has until recently been focused on his own survival, it’s a newfound luxury to spend quality time with robots and marshmallows. “I’ve got to say,” a grinning Obama said, “this is fun.”
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Previously:
• 02/08/12 Obama pumps the compressor of Joe Hudy's Extreme Marshmallow Cannon
• 02/07/12 Abramoff's atonement
• 02/01/12 Why we in the media just love Newt
• 01/31/12 The end of the road for Newt Gingrich?
• 01/25/12 Gingrich is Obama's best surrogate
• 01/24/12 Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney's attack dog
• 01/16/12 Mitt Romney's Al Gore problem
• 01/12/12 Kamikaze Gingrich, on the loose in South Carolina
• 01/11/12 Journalists' campaign trail secrets revealed
• 01/10/12 Mitt Romney's money problem
• 01/09/12 Newtonian exceptionalism
• 01/05/12 Mitt Romney out of control
• 01/04/12 Indecision 2012: In Iowa and the GOP
• 01/03/12 Rick Santorum's curious closing argument
• 12/28/11 A few cracks in my crystal ball
• 12/23/11 A few cracks in my crystal ball
• 12/20/11 Strange brews and views?
• 12/19/11 Cellphone ban would be a distraction
• 12/15/11 Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and the Malfunction Minuet
• 12/14/11 The presidential auction of 2012
• 12/12/11 Newt's tactics comes back to haunt him
• 12/06/11 Can an anthem save Occupy non-movement?
• 12/05/11 The winner of the GOP campaign: Washington
• 11/30/11 Barney the bully: Congressman Frank's other legacy
• 11/23/11 Jon Kyl's search-and-destroy mission
• 11/21/11 Pay to play, brought to you by Washington
• 11/17/11 Big enough to save the supercommittee?
• 11/16/11 Why Newt Gingrich won't last
• 11/08/11 The 2012 campaign gets seedier
• 11/06/11 A Machiavellian model for Obama
• 11/03/11 The Herman Cain crack-up
• 11/01/11 Cain can --- he will survive
• 10/27/11 Stuntmen of the supercommittee
• 10/26/11 Democrats on the sidelines
• 10/24/11 Rick Perry's birther Parade
• 10/24/11 The birthers eat their own
• 10/19/11 The GOP's middle man
• 10/17/11 The waiting for nothing Congress
• 10/12/11 Sparsely occupied D.C.: Why the movement hasn't caught on
• 10/10/11 Can Obama strike an alliance with Occupy Wall Street?
• 10/06/11 Chris Christie, such a presidential tease
• 10/05/11 Obama and his foot soldiers go toe to toe
• 09/28/11 Cain could deliver
• 09/26/11 Republicans? Mr. Nice Guys?
• 09/22/11 Why Ron Paul is winning the GOP primary
• 09/21/11 I am a job creator who creates no jobs
• 09/20/11 Obama launches a revolution
• 09/19/11 Dems for Romney?
• 09/14/11 ‘Supercommittee’? More than stupor committee
• 09/07/11 Mitt Romney finds his (corporate) voice
• 09/01/11 The infallible Dick Cheney
• 08/31/11 This liberal says Perry is the ultimate conservative candidate
• 08/29/11 Wanted: More bite from Obama the Great Nibbler
• 08/10/11 How Rep. Austin Scott betrayed his Tea Party roots
• 08/09/11 The most powerful man on Earth?
• 08/08/11 The FAA shutdown and the new rules of Washington
• 08/04/11 Lt. Col. Allen West fires a round at the Tea Party
• 08/03/11 Government on autopilot
• 08/02/11 Dems mourn debt deal like death
• 07/27/11 Life imitates sport
• 07/26/11 Obama and Boehner take on Washington
• 07/21/11 Why Americans are angry at Congress
• 07/20/11 The new party of Reagan
• 07/18/11 Rob Portman, the boring Midwesterner who could bring sanity to the debt debate
• 07/13/11 John Boehner's bind
• 07/04/11 Stephen Colbert, Karl Rove and the mockery of campaign finance
• 07/01/11 President Puts Up His Dukes, As He Ought To
• 06/28/11 Rod Blagojevich verdict: All shook up
• 06/27/11 Progressives voice their anger at Obama
• 06/24/11 Mission accomplished, Obama style
• 06/22/11 Jon Huntsman's first step toward oblivion
• 06/21/11 Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs
• 06/20/11 A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney
• 06/06/11 Hubris and humility: Sarah Palin and Robert Gates on tour
• 06/02/11 The Weiner roast
• 06/01/11 Congress clocks in to clock out
• 05/30/11 Hermanator II: No More Mr. Gadfly
• 05/24/11 How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
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