A former official in the George H.W. Bush White House estimates that the bloated public and private debt in the US works out to $250,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.Pretty much all of the debt was run up by Republicans Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Shrub. Bill Clinton got us out of the red, ran a surplus, and was paying off the debts incurred by his Republican predecessors. Then along came Dick Cheney, who infamously growled: "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."
Nevertheless:
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% now trust the GOP more to handle economic issues, while 39% trust Democrats more.Of course, Rasmussen phone polls skew right. Still, conservatives remain the largest ideological group in the country. Their numbers are growing. Nearly twice as many Americans call themselves "conservative" than "liberal."
The prog-blogs don't feature those The-GOP-is-so-over posts anymore, do they? The Republicans made a decision to play ideological hardball, to let the barbarians speak on their behalf. That decision is working.
Republicans can't govern well and they can't manage money. But they can control perceptions. An increasing number of Americans believe that the people who created the mess can fix it. They think that regulation is the problem, not the solution. And they think that Obama is a Socialist, when he's really a conservative wolf in prog clothing.
8 comments:
It sure didn't seem like the GOP really wanted to win last year, did it?
In boxing it's called "taking a dive"
I believe you are exactly right. Lets the Dems have the financial mess, let the Dem's amatuer win. Watch the hole get deeper and deeper under the Democrat's majority in Congress. Defeat the Dems for next few decades by reminding America howw they suffered under a Demcratic Congress and Administration.
"It sure didn't seem like the GOP really wanted to win last year, did it?"
Did so.
Mark Crispin Miller estimates Republican vote-flipping and skulduggery reduced Obama's victory by half. If the Republicans were taking a dive, this would not be the case.
Oh, please. Mark Crispin Miller lost it. He was shrieking that Hillary Clinton "stole" NH in the primary. I was in NH. Support for Hillary was widespread, passionate, and local. The only Obot support I saw there was from operatives.
I liked MCM's writings when they centered on what he knows best...language. He had some astute things to say about Bush's misspeaks. I wish he hadn't become an Obot and conspiracynut (he bought into the 9/11 nuttery as well) because it would've been interesting to hear an expert view like his on our Teleprompter-in-Chief's stuttering, etc.
Pardon me Joe I know this is OT but if you don't already know it looks like Sir Allen Stanford has just recently been indicted:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090619/ap_on_bi_ge/us_stanford_surrenders
By calling Obama a socialist they enable him to move farther and farther to the right, and the Failbots follow along behind.
Perry, if the Repugs had really wanted Obama to win, right-wing 527s would have spent their whole 300 mil (maybe much more) instead of the 27 mil they actually did. And the conservative-run financial and media industries would have backed him instead of Obama. And on and on....
Sergei Rostov
Joe,
Good point with this post. However, you have to remember this:
--For around forty years, the Repubs and the right wing have built up a media machine consisting of television, radio, books, mags, newspapers, and the 'net to get their message out.
--For about that long, progressives and liberals have not done anything close to this.
Bob Sommersby of the Daily Howler and Bob Parry of Consortium News (and Todd Gitlin in his book THE INTELLECTUALS AND THE FLAG) have long argued that this is a major reason why so many today think that a)Reagan was a great President, b)Bill and Hillary Clinton are the spawn of Satan, nd c) GW Bush was the better choice for Prez than Al Gore (progs just repeat Nader's idiocy about how, "they're all the same").
Until we can get a better media infrastructure in place (granted, Air America is a start, as is the MSNBC trio of Olbermann, Schultz, and Maddow) and to stop using the Internet as the ONLY alternative, the Repubs will continue to win the perception wars.
And yes, Clinton did bring us out of the red and into the black. Too bad we didn't appreciate it enough.
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