Subscribe by RSSWhile Republican candidates pursue the Obama record as the basis for defeating the President in November the early symptoms of what the Obama campaign will look like are starting to emerge. The strategy was foreshadowed last year.
The approval numbers on the Obama Administration’s signature legislative efforts continue to decline. There is little case to be made for economic policy that has resulted in the slowest recovery in modern history and has hit none of the benchmarks identified early in the Administration’s tenure.
Running against a ‘do nothing’ Congress is the prevailing wisdom in the pundit class. That simply won’t be enough to re-elect the President and he knows it.
What will happen is a continual flurry of rhetorical proposals from the President. Everything from banks to housing, communication policy, mortgage refinancing; it will be a long list by the time the campaign get’s into full swing. He will, as he indicated in his State of The Union address, carefully structure a number of these ‘proposals’ to be attractive to centrist, independent voters. Others will be a signal to the base that they will read accurately; “hang on we’ll be back where we were as soon as we’re re-elected.” There may or may not be formal submissions to Congress; it won’t matter. Democrats will, surely, not rush to file legislation on behalf of the President’s proposals as that might actually result in Congress doing something, and we can’t have that!
For each criticism the President anticipates there will be a series of rhetorical proposals. He will cast his proposals against a Republican Congress and demand action absent formal legislation submissions. He will muddle criticism of his record with proposals he has no intention of following up on. This, we have also seen.
Criticize The President on the economy or nearly any other major issue and the response will be that he’s made ’X’ number of proposals that Congress has not acted on. He will carefully structure these proposals to include some aspects that would be acceptable to Republicans, as he did in the State of The Union.
The question will simply be; will the electorate look around them for evidence of competence and improvement or will they, once again, be lulled into a state of denial?
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Excellent points made.I also believe that just as no budget proposals have been made by the Democratic Congress in what 1000 days now they will not propose any major legislation as you suggested in your article.Democrats aren’t to enthused to run for re-election on the Presidents coat tails due to his popularity polls and thus aren’t going to stick their necks out proposing legislation.From my past experiences I find it very difficult to believe that Democratic voters would put the President under any kind of scrutiny or vetting process.Progressives just don’t go the gnawing conscience or agonizing appraisal route but instead show an unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought.In this time of extremely partisan politics I therefore see more patronage and less patriotism from the left.
The President meanwhile is making note of all the statements,policies and character flaws pointed out in the Republican primaries and will no doubt make issue of any hypocrisy once a Republican nominee is determined.As in the past envy,class warfare and race baiting will play a major part there is no doubt.
The biggest question now will be who the two candidates will choose as their running mates.If Mr.Romney gets the nomination will he pick a conservative like Rick Santorum who will help his weak support in that area? There is also a rumor President Obama will pick Sec.of State Clinton not only to help with his base but to set up her running in 2016.Lets face it Vice President Biden has been a opprobrium to the administration.
Over the past two weeks I have posted three items which after showing they seemed to have been taken are lost in cyber space somewhere.After hitting “submit” a second time it said “Duplicate. It seems you have made this comment already”.
It is now obvious I was wrong in accusing Bill of hitting “Report Comment”and thus having them taken off. My apologies go out to Bill in this instance.
Is easy to consider thinking I reported your comments, since few write here, with remarks made that should not had been said by you. I just didn’t. Clearly there were other matters why I will restrict my comments here as I explained previously.
Limited “apologies” accepted…