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As I write this, I’m listening (via Steve Benen) to the president’s speech in Ohio today, for which a transcript it appears to be unavailable. I like what I’m hearing, not only because it frames the election as a choice between two stark, fundamentally different visions of what the country needs economically, but because it implicitly challenges Republicans to explain exactly what they are proposing now that Bush and company didn’t propose during the ‘oughts.
It’s amazing to me that Republicans have managed to avoid association with the Bush economic record by repeatedly attacking Bush for not doing even more of the things that wrecked the economy. Bush didn’t deregulate enough. Bush didn’t cut taxes enough. Bush didn’t shred the social safety net enough. Bush didn’t ratchet down nondefense discretionary spending that provides public sector jobs and private-sector contracts enough. These are the aspects of Bush’s record that lead today’s Republicans to say he “betrayed conservative principles;” these are the “mistakes” they would correct.
No, Obama hasn’t come up with some brilliant new slogan or sound-bite. But he has, finally, begun the hard but necessary task of explaining that conservative ideology, whether it’s promoted by George W. Bush or Mitt Romney, is inherently bad for middle-class economic prospects. I particularly like his adoption of Bill Clinton’s line that Romney’s economic policies are Bush’s policies “on steroids.” Maybe if he repeats that a few hundred times, Team Mitt will finally have to explain exactly how its policies differ from those of Bush, and admit that it’s mainly a matter of even more regressive taxes and an assault on the New Deal and Great Society legacy that Bush could only dream about.
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FlipYrWhig on June 14, 2012 5:35 PM:
No, Obama hasn抰 come up with some brilliant new slogan or sound-bite.
Isn't all this implicit in having chosen the campaign slogan "forward"? Romney takes us backwards... to Bush.
Joe Friday on June 14, 2012 6:01 PM:
"It's amazing to me that Republicans have managed to avoid association with the Bush economic record by repeatedly attacking Bush for not doing even more of the things that wrecked the economy."
As I've previously mentioned, the American RightWing thinks the problem is not that they're hitting themselves in the head with a hammer, but that they're not hitting themselves in the head with a hammer hard enough.
Kathryn on June 14, 2012 7:39 PM:
Heard Obama's speech ( most of it), very direct, clear, wonder how main stream media will manage distort it but confident they will. The speech seemed to me to follow the blueprint of Democracy (whatever) in it's focus on the middle class, await Ed's review.
shelby on June 14, 2012 11:26 PM:
Seems to me the slogans almost write themselves. 'You can't vote for George W. Bush again, but you can bring back his economy.' or 'Mitt Romney - it'll be almost as good as a third term for Bush.'
N.Wells on June 14, 2012 11:28 PM:
FlipYrWhig: true, but leaves me wondering whether "Forward (not backward)" wouldn't be a better slogan. Some voters need things spelled out clearly and frequently for the message to sink home.
The few sound bites I heard from Obama's speech today weren't bad but sounded like "their solution ...., our solution..." "and "a stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different views"
I want Democrats yelling at every opportunity, "it's their deficit and their disaster, they've blocked as many Democratic solutions as they can to make the economy worse, and they want to double the things they did that caused the disaster in the first place".
I'd also like them to be yelling, "Most of the deficit that they slam Obama with is the true cost of their tax breaks coming out from behind the curtain, plus Obama's honest accounting in putting their off-the-books war spending onto the books, plus the cost of fixing their economic disaster that they caused, and it's all going to get worse if you elect Republicans at any level. Send the republicans a message, send them all home." Most voters do not get this, and just keep spouting republican mantras about huge Obama deficits.
Andy Olsen on June 14, 2012 11:45 PM:
I object. It's not the "憃ughts." That is language of the ancients. No-one talks like that anymore.
It's the "Oh's" As in oh-1, oh-2, 03.
Or as in "uh-oh." The Uh Oh's!
We really need to get a modern name for that decade.
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