The GOP talking points memo is out, and here’s the line: The deficit is Obama’s fault and Republicans are simply trying to squeeze some fiscal responsibility from Washington.
When you hear this meme repeated on FOX News or even from legitimate outlets, keep this little dose of reality in mind.
When Obama was elected in 2008, he wasn’t trying to shrink the deficit, he was trying to fix the ECONOMY. The economy was on the skids after eight years with no oversight as Republicans gutted regulatory policies, and their buddies at the top of the income ladder raided the resulting cash. The economy also struggled under the ever-increasing costs of providing employees with health care insurance.
When Obama crafted a stimulus effort in 2009, he wasn’t trying to shrink the deficit, he was trying to decrease unemployment. Unemployment was up because of a years-long trend to increase profits by offshoring American jobs and importing manufactured goods from China and other developing markets. The stimulus was acknowledged by credible economists as keeping the country from sliding into a depression.
When Republicans and the tea party claimed they wanted jobs in 2010, they weren’t trying to create any, they were simply ginning up an argument about taking the long way around to improve the economy by shrinking the deficit. This was a ruse to cut social programs they always targeted, along with funding for institutions they see as wastes, like National Public Radio and public schools and universities.
So here’s how the spin will sound.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus…asks state party leaders to remind voters that the “massive debt we face is a direct result of President Obama’s failures to govern like he campaigned.”
“Let them know that Republicans have taken the task of deficit reduction seriously,” Priebus writes in the memo, according to the RNC.
Priebus paints Republicans on Capitol Hill as problem solvers, who passed plans for a balanced budget and are willing to make tough choices to ensure deficit reduction, while Democrats and the president are determined to push significant tax increases and more stimulus money.
To recap: Obama is governing exactly as he campaigned (which leaves some on the left unhappy). His early focus was never on deficit reduction, nor should it have been.
And finally, if Republicans took “the task of deficit reduction seriously,” they’d be open to closing tax loopholes and ending the Bush tax cuts.
Unfortunately, Americans (that is those in the USA) have no memory or common sense when it comes to propaganda. So these talking points won’t work when Limbaugh can still get away with soup’d up stats like, “50% of (insert scapegoat) are below average.”