Obama Just Don’t Know When to Shut Up
By Larry Johnson on April 3, 2010 at 10:13 PM in Current Affairs
If the first rule of crisis management is, “If you’re in a hole stop digging,” then we may be seeing the corollary for politics–i.e., when you pass an unpopular policy stop talking about it.
No matter how much lipstick Obama smears on his turd of a healthcare plan, most people don’t want to kiss it or embrace it. Dump it? Oh yeah.
So what does Barack “Magic Man” Obama do?
He keeps telling folks what a swell plan it is, except he doesn’t know when to stop flapping his gums.
According to the Washington Post (this is shocking):
Even by President Obama’s loquacious standards, an answer he gave here on health care Friday was a doozy.
Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” package.
“We are overtaxed as it is,” Doris said bluntly.
Obama started out feisty. “Well, let’s talk about that, because this is an area where there’s been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I’m going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have,” the president said.
He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer — more than 2,500 words long — wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, “F-Map”). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as “FICA”).
Keep talking Barack, keep talking. You are building support alright, but it is support for those who want to repeal your disaster.
That’s not my opinion, rather that appears to be the opinion of a growing number of Americans. Scott Rasmussen reports:
Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on nine out of 10 key issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports, but the gap between the two parties has grown narrower on several of them.
Following the passage of the health care bill, 53% now say they trust Republicans on the issue of health care. Thirty-seven percent (37%) place their trust in Democrats. A month earlier, the two parties were essentially even on the health care issue.
These results are consistent with the finding that 54% of voters want the health care bill repealed. Rasmussen Reports is tracking support for repeal on a weekly basis. Still, health care ranks just number five among voters on the list of 10 important issues. The economy remains the top issue of voter concern as it has been for over years.
On the economy, Republicans are trusted more by 49% while Democrats are preferred by 37%. That’s a big improvement for the GOP following a five-point advantage last month. More voters who make under $20,000 annually trust Democrats on this issue, but voters who earn more than that favor Republicans.
This looks increasingly like Barack Obama’s MISSION ACCOMPLISHED moment. Touting a victory that most reject is the kind of foolish, stubborness that George Bush practiced. Looks like Barack, as Reverend Amy noted in an earlier piece, wants to be like George.
by Ronald Scott
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