Day: February 27, 2013

Weak, Whiny Republicans Have Plenty to Whine About

Buck Banks

Big, bad President Obama, creepy Harry Reid, that B-word Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the gang of toughs called the Democratic Party are picking on the poor defenseless GOP. As a campaigning theme, it seems insane. The GOP has long prospered by portraying Democrats as the wimps, dangerously weak and unfit for command. Does the name Michael Dukakis ring a bell? And in really heady moments, like 1984, when Reagan earned his second term, or 1994 and 2010, when sweeping victories in off-year elections seemed to foretell an imminent landslide, Republican fantasies of one-party rule involved the triumph of their party, not humiliation by the other side. … In fact, moaning about how weak you are compared with the opposition seems so obviously a political mistake that we can only reach one conclusion: This must be sincere.

— Michael Kinsley, in the New Republic, chronicles how Republicans, and their affiliated media, are complaining “loudly about feeling bullied by their opponents.”

Poll: 90% of Americans Mistakenly Believe the Deficit Is Rising Or Flat – Just 6% Know It Is Actually Shrinking

Jon Ponder

A Bloomberg poll released last week found that 90 percent of Americans hold the mistaken view that the U.S. deficit is rising or staying the same, when in fact it has been shrinking at a rapid pace since Pres. Obama took office.

Misunderstood Deficit: [The] size and trajectory of the U.S. deficit is poorly understood by most Americans, with 62 percent saying it’s getting bigger, 28 percent saying it’s staying about the same this year, and just 6 percent saying it’s shrinking. The Congressional Budget Office reported Feb. 6 that the federal budget deficit is getting smaller, falling to $845 billion this year — the first time in five years that the gap between taxes and spending will be less than $1 trillion.

Americans also have a skewed picture of what drives federal spending.

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