If you thought that the “phony scandal” strategy was over, then you were dead wrong. Kicking off his move to pivot to the economy at Knox College – which has to be the tenth pivot now – President Obama cited those pesky abuses of power as the main reason why he cannot get his agenda through Congress. He’ll travel to Tennessee Tuesday to continue trying to frame this fall’s fiscal fights (Read the 4 Biggest Lies During Obama’s Speech At Knox College).
To put the rest of this article in context, the White House convened two meetings on Wednesday to coalesce Democrats around the same talking points as they head home to their districts for the August recess.
Organizing for Action, which is truthfully Obama’s campaign transformed into a nonprofit group to help promote his second-term agenda, sent out a release Friday pledging to make this August “hard for Speaker John Boehner, [R-Ohio,] to forget. The email included an “I’m in” button to click to “be a part of ‘action August.’”
President Obama will huddle with House Democrats on Capitol Hill next week to hash out a party-wide strategy on the economy and the roll-out of the central part of his health care law this fall, first meeting Wednesday morning with House Democrats, then with Senate Democrats. I have to hand it to collectivists, they are always in lock-step with each other, while the individualistic party that promotes thinking for yourself is again in message disarray. That brings us to the “architect” Mr. Karl Rove.
Karl Rove has once again offered his unsolicited advice, which is once again opposed to the intellectual base of the GOP. By intellectual I refer to Senator Mike Lee R-UT, Senator Rand Paul R-KY, and Senator Marco Rubio R-FL, because all of the new ideas coming from the right have come from them, like those ideas or not.
Rove has been parading all over Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and his own site, calling the move to defund Obamacare in the Continuing Resolution a politically suicidal move. By now, few of us have not heard Rove claim, “President Obama would love nothing more than Republicans’ providing him a bully pulpit and big stick with which he can beat them daily through the 2014 midterm elections. That’s what the Republicans would give Mr. Obama if they shut down the government by trying to defund ObamaCare in the Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the federal government after October 1.”
He continued in support of his argument to say, “Defunding ObamaCare in the CR would not affect spending for the expansion of Medicaid, which is almost half of ObamaCare’s cost. Nor would it affect the Exchanges – the subsidies for insurance coverage – that’s also mandatory spending.”
To be fair to Mr. Rove, that is mostly correct, defunding Obamacare through the CR will perhaps affect 1% or 2% of the bill. But Rove is missing the bigger point, and for a numbers guy, I am a little shocked that he isn’t seeing the bigger picture. Americans overwhelmingly support ousting this entire bill. In fact, support for an outright repeal has grown, not subsided. The Democrats’ strategy is simple and three-fold: 1) to “pivot” to jobs, 2) dismiss the plethora of scandals, 3) and get as many people hooked on the heorin-like entitlement before it collapses under its own weight.
You know, just as the entitlement program Mr. Rove’s old boss signed into law, which we couldn’t afford either
This August is particularly important for both parties as they prepare for several fall budget battles with a deadline over raising the debt-ceiling expected in September. Yet, as the Democrats are all getting on the same page, we are bumping into each other, incoherently.
Every time the GOP opposes a fundamental attack on our principles, we are always reminded of the backlash Republicans experienced when the government shutdown in the 1990s. The inappropriate use of historical analogy is killing the GOP. The only relevant parallel that can be drawn between then and now is the fractured status of the party. Speaker Gingrich also had to contend with those within his party getting cold feet and abandoning their party’s principles.
The GOP-controlled House exists right now only because of opposition to Obamacare. In 2012, ceding the fight over Obamacare didn’t work out that well for the party, and the last threat of a government shutdown, as Bob Woodward observed, hurt the president in the polls just as much as it hurt House Republicans.
Mr. Rove has a few decisions to make. You are either against Obamacare or not. You are either against dependency on government or not. You are either a man of your principles or not.
Whether or not the threat of a government shutdown is a politically suicidal move is yet to be known, but what is for certain is that a fractured GOP cannot stand up to lock-step collectivists offering cradle-to-the-grave entitlements. Real conservatives understand that another entitlement, which we cannot afford, will be one more nail in freedom’s coffin.
Instead of causing even more division within the party, Mr. Rove should be using his microphone and pen to warn Americans of the danger of entitlements run by bureaucrats who have already established they are wanting in the integrity sector. The prospect of the IRS enforcing Obamacare and controlling the medical records of millions of Americans is absolutely terrifying to everyday people who vote.
If we were to make the case against Obamacare, rather than repeating the mistake of running from the debate, while educating voters on the hoax that is the threat of a “government shutdown,” then we are more likely to be rewarded for it than not. The idea that a government shutdown will lose the House in a political environment favorable to the GOP as Democrats’ challenges are compounded in individual races, is a bit of a stretch. The bottom line is that the House is not likely to turn to Democratic control anytime soon because of redrawn districts.
The Senate on the other hand is another story altogether. But considering the polls, it would seem that Obamacare would make a compelling argument for a GOP-controlled Senate. We really have to begin asking ourselves if Karl Rove remembers that “a House divided cannot stand,” and a fractured GOP will certainly destroy any chance for a turnover in 2014.
I disagree with many people regarding Mr. Rove. The reelection of President Bush in 2004 was his brainchild and it was a masterpiece. And Mr. Rove, in my mind, still has much to contribute to the future of the GOP. But the future direction of the GOP lays with new blood, and the true obstructionists are coming from within our party largely headed by Mr. Rove. Rather than citing polls conducted by Crossroads GPS, Rove should start thinking up a replacement plan to take to the American people after we defund Obamacare.
