One of my most popular posts last week was one titled Citizenry of Sillytown, USA in which I questioned the efforts by so many Americans – particularly the Republican Party – to stir up controversy around President Barack Obama’s speech. Appearing on The Dave Elswick Show last week with David Kinkade of The Arkansas Project, guest-host Alice Stewart asked me about my characterization of protesters at health care town halls as “shouters.” This, too, has been good for Web traffic.
Bob Herbert’s column today in The New York Times got me thinking about all of this in light of two important speeches Mr. Obama will deliver this week: one on education today in Virginia, and an address to a joint session of Congress on health care reform.
Mr. Herbert notes,
There is no end to the craziness. The entire Republican Party has decided that it is in favor of absolutely nothing. The president’s stimulus package? No way. Health care reform? Forget about it.
There is not a thing you can come up with that the G.O.P. is for. Sunshine in the morning? Harry Reid couldn’t persuade a single Senate Republican to vote yes.
Incredibly, the party’s poll numbers are going up.
According to the daily presidential tracking poll by Rasmussen Reports, 50% of Americans approve of Mr. Obama’s performance, 49% disapprove. So what gives? Since when did being against everything inspire faith in a political party?
Take, for example, the cash-for-clunkers program. Creative and wildly successful, former Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee didn’t think so, arguing that the sales would have occurred anyway. There’s no evidence of this, of course. Still, it personifies the deterioration of political discourse in America. Put another way: if Mr. Obama is for it, the GOP is against it.
The visciousness by which this strategy is employed is best evidenced by the opposition to his address to school children today. Silly in every aspect, it also exposed deep-seeded ignorances and biases among on citizens. Spend a few minutes on Michelle Malkin’s blog and understand what I’m talking about.
Yet, Mr. Obama appears to be in a free fall. Watching MSNBC over the Labor Day weekend Charlie Cook of The Cook Political Report questioned whether moderate Democrats would even attend Mr. Obama’s speech on Wednesday night. First, we keep the President out of schools and now members of his own party avoid perhaps the most important speech of his political life?
To quote NealGladner via Twitter: “I wish people still respected the office of the President, even if they disagree with him. No excuse for the venom about his talk to kids.”
Unfortunately, we appear headed in the opposite direction.
You can’t deny the facts:
http://crosssection.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/the-big-speech-what-you-will-hear-vs-the-facts/
Fact checking the President’s speech:
http://crosssection.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/show-me-the-money/
Bob Herbert called the cash-for-clunkers program “startlingly creative” and you agree it was “creative”.
Funnily enough, though, it is no more than a simple copy of a German stimulus program called the “Abwrackprämie” that started last January.
I guess the Germans are “startlingly creative” people.
[...] I’ve been noting Republicans’ “We’re against everything” strategy for a while. [...]