« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

MEMBER DIARY

Stimulus Puts Obama in Tough Territory

Conservatives must capitalize on the administration's missteps

By: Robert Bluey (Diary)  |  July 8th, 2009 at 02:00 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Is the White House’s well-oiled communications machine coming undone less than six months after President Obama took office?

Based on the past few days of mounting criticism regarding Obama’s top achievement — passage of the $787 billion stimulus — it appears that cracks are beginning to form. The administration wants to avoid distractions from its quest for government-run health care, but the mismanaged stimulus, combined with 9.5% unemployment, make it difficult.

Conservatives should not let this opportunity go to waste.

It started last Thursday with news that unemployment reached its highest level in 26 years. Vice President Joe Biden’s admission Sunday that the administration “misread the economy” prompted Obama to interrupt his scripted Russia trip to clarify Biden’s gaffe. “Rather than say ‘misread,’ we had incomplete information,” Obama told NBC’s Chuck Todd.

There was more bad news today with a Government Accountability Report that contradicted Obama’s own statements about the stimulus. The GAO report even prompted the president’s die-hard supporters at the Center for American Progress to disagree with Obama whether the stimulus should be used to prevent layoffs or pay for longer-term projects to boost the economy.

Perhaps the strongest signal that the administration is nervous came yesterday afternoon when Biden’s office announced a panicked trip to Ohio in the wake of new polling from Quinnipiac University. Obama’s approval rating in Ohio over the past two months dropped from 62% to 49%. It took an even bigger dip among Ohio independents, falling from 59 percent to 38 percent. The president’s ratings on the economy are even worse.

Meanwhile, Republicans are capitalizing on the administration’s missteps by directing their fire at the stimulus.

“This is the greatest fabrication I’ve seen since I’ve been in Congress,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said of Obama’s claim that he had “incomplete information” about the economy. Boehner has made a mockery of the stimulus by enlisting a bloodhound to track down jobs.

At a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing today, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) accused the administration of having “rigged the game in its own favor” by repeatedly citing the “jobs saved” claim Obama loves to trumpet.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), chairman of the House Republican Conference, attacked Obama’s July 1 claim that the stimulus had “done its job” in a new web video that promotes a GOP alternative.

Unlike other issues where Republicans capitulated, the stimulus passed the House without a single GOP vote. Now is the time to hang this around Obama’s neck and watch him sink.

Tags: , ,
Get Alerts

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • Spartan4Life

    People are starting to realize that government spending doesn’t work.

    Keynes was a semi-communist whose ideas were just that, ideas. Unfortunately, they have been adopted as some kind of dogma for 75 years, despite the fact that they have been an abject failure. Read my Keynes diary here:

    http://www.redstate.com/spartan4life/2009/07/03/we-need-to-kill-john-maynard-keynes/

    • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

      But there is no “once and for all”. Otherwise we would have been able to learn from the 1970′s. I am afraid that every generation or so has to be reminded the hard way that there is no free lunch.

  • Spartan4Life

    Does anybody think there is any appetite in this country for a Porkulus II when these buffoons just pissed away $787B? Methinks not.

    • exitsfunnel

      I think that people are finally really starting to understand the degree to which they were bamboozled by the porkapalooza ‘stimulus’ bill. I almost hope that they try to go to the trough again, because I think the result might be real political consequences.

      -exits

    • Thomas_Hauber

      They will portray it as an unemployment extension and state aid. But in the fine print, of which there will be several hundred pages, will be all sorts of crap.

  • izoneguy

    Justifying anything they have passed while Obama has been president. Can you think of one thing they have passed that has been a help to the American people? They keep saying all these new laws & programs are a benefit to the American people. All I see is the dems benefiting themselves and could care less about working men & women.

  • ciscoguy

    that he nor any of his Democratic congressional colleagues had read with “incomplete information” about the state of the economy. I would also like him to provide any discernible evidence that the stimulus is working at all.

  • Tbone

    in that is all that Biden can draw.

  • Bourbeau

    Elections matter and we, as a country, are going to pay dearly for this mistake. However, it is more important to realize your mistake and act to correct it, then to sit back and tolerate it. In that regard, we’re finally waking up to the fact that this man and his ideas are not what we need or want. Let’s hope the Republicans in the Congress have the savy to stall or water down whatever the Democrats are trying to accomplish, and marshall our resources to take the House back in 2010 and put the brakes on this runaway freight train of an administration.

  • Warrior

    nationalized healthcare. That will have to be killed in the womb.

    • Warrior

      n/t

  • http://www.800cart.com Ron Robinson

    If the Rs simply promise to let worker keep more of what they earn, and keep the government out of their lives, we will win again.

    • Spartan4Life

      For that golden age when they had a job. It was called the Bush years.

      Yes, maybe my wife and I did build a McMansion. But it required plumbers, electricians, painters, movers, furniture salespeople, bricklayers, drywallers, tilers, cement layers, and a host of other folks who benefitted.

      “Green Jobs” is a myth. They lose 500K jobs by attacking the private sector and some wind turbine manufacturer creates 500. Ha.

  • Old_Crow

    and Obama will be as popular as malaria. Not only is porkulus II a bad idea, but it would drive us into a decade of malaise.

    We need to unwind what hasn’t been spent in the first porkulus bill and focus on cutting government spending. Give the people back their money, let individual taxpayers allocate their resources instead of the current situation where banks hoard assets the government forced the taxpayers to provide.

    • http://theminorityreportblog.com David Hinz

      As Stimulus IV will employ 50% of all American digging holes that the other 50% of Americans will be paid to fill back up…

      …it will not be productive, but it will be full employment.

      FDR did it in the 1930′s and we got tons of fire roads built all over America.

      • IJB

        …The other 50% will actually be *buried alive* in those holes, on orders from The Dear Leader! :(

  • bobojake

    and he will get eaten by his own.

  • redneck_hippie

    All that remains is for all of us to take advantage of it and replace the statists with conservatives.

  • http://brockwayfamily.spaces.live.com/ Erick Brockway

    It started last Thursday with news that unemployment reached its highest level in 26 years. Vice President Joe Biden?s admission Sunday that the administration ?misread the economy? prompted Obama to interrupt his scripted Russia trip to clarify Biden?s gaffe. ?Rather than say ?misread,? we had incomplete information,? Obama told NBC?s Chuck Todd.

    Yeah, but Bush’s “Incomplete information” prior to Iraq was a lie, says Obama, etc.

    Is anyone even paying attention to this garbage out in Obamaland? The word “bot” doesn’t even fit anymore, unless it’s preceded by “drooling”.

    • redneck_hippie

      vis a vis the faulty intelligence on WMD. But that’s looking to the past.

      Desperation abounds as O attempts to keep passing the buck back to the Bush years. It ain’t workin, O…And just at the time that The People are starting to pay attention, too. Not only does Obama’s buck not stop there, the buck is being flogged to death on the printing press.

      Will the phrase the buck stops here mean the same thing when we have to denominate our currency in wheelbarrows?