Change We Can Believe In (And Obama Can Politically Exploit)

“I assume we’re angered by use of military successes for political campaigns because none of us were alive in 2008 or 2004.”

- Republican consultant and former Bush speechwriter Josh Trevino.
 
This is exactly what I was thinking as I was listening to all the Republicans criticize the Obama campaign for using the bin Laden killing in political ads.  Although the GOP probably did not invent the idea of using military and foreign policy successes for political purposes, they certainly perfected it during the Bush/Cheney years.  In 2003, George W. Bush actually pranced around in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier muttering "mission accomplished" and then declared the end to major military operations in Iraq -- and the war resulting from that colossal foreign policy fuck-up would continue on for another eight years!

Christ, GOP operatives would even make shit up in order to tout their party's national security "successes" while criticizing their opponents. Remember the Fort Hood shootings in late 2009, when Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 29 others?  Republicans went out of their way to brand that event as a "domestic terrorist attack" and then the GOP Echo Chamber followed up that effort by going on television in a desperate attempt to re-write history. 

After the Fort Hood shootings, Rudy Fucking Giuliani appeared on Good Morning America and actually stated: "We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama."  In November 2009, former Bush White House Press Secretary Dana Perino similarly commented on FoxNews that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."  Not to be outdone by all this bullshittery, GOP political consultant Mary Matalin stated on CNN in December 2009 that the 9-11 attacks occurred during Clinton's presidency: "We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history. And President Bush dealt with it."

For those of you who were sleeping during the last decade, the 9-11 attacks occurred on Bush and Cheney's watch, nine months into their presidency.  These attacks took place after Bush and Cheney were repeatedly warned by outgoing Clinton people that Al Qaeda would be the incoming Bush Administration's top national security priority and then after being specifically warned by the CIA in August 2001 that bin Laden was determined to strike targets in the United States.

And if that isn't enough GOP failure for you, Bush and Cheney then let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora, took their eyes off the ball in Afghanistan by deciding to invade Iraq, then -- in 2005 -- actually dissolved the CIA unit focused on the capture of bin Laden.  Obama, of course, re-started our effort to get bin Laden, and then actually killed that sonofabitch, accomplishing in less than two-and-a-half years what Bush and Cheney couldn't do in eight.

Face it GOP:  You guys fucked up big time when it came to protecting our country from terrorists, and Obama succeeded where you failed.  You all need to deal with the fact that this truth will come up from time to time during the run-up to the General Election.

A Bumper Sticker That Pretty Much Says It All

This bumper sticker goes after Romney in two ways. Mitt is, of course, famous for his "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op/ed he wrote in 2008, but he also opposed pursuing Osama bin Laden:

The Obama campaign isn’t shy about using the raid that killed Osama bin Laden as a political cudgel. But the White House’s record may get a boost from the GOP’s choice of nominee, whose previous presidential campaign included a spat with fellow Republicans over the relative unimportance of catching the Al Qaeda leader. In the campaign’s first major election speech on foreign policy, Vice President Joe Biden made extremely prominent use of an April 2007 Romney quote on bin Laden, in which he told the Associated Press “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” “I was a little more direct,” Biden said in his speech. “We will follow the SOB to the gates of hell.”

Back in 2007, Obama famously stated that if he had actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets in Pakistan and President Musharraf wouldn't act, then he would. Romney attacked Obama for that comment, comparing him to Dr. Strangelove.  Obama followed through on his campaign promise by sending Seal Team 6 into Pakistan to kill bin Laden without giving the Pakistanis a heads-up on the raid.

I'm glad to see that the Obama Campaign is going to make Romney pay for his weak position with regard to fighting terrorism.  I can't wait to hear Mitt try to explain this one away.

By the way, this is hilarious:

John Dingell is the longest currently-serving member of Congress (and the third longest-serving ever). The acerbic 85-year-old Michigan Democrat had long been contemptuous of Tea Partiers. He found them unruly and difficult to get along with. Dingell tended to refer to them as “tea baggers,” a phrase that has an alternate sexual meaning. This normally wouldn’t have been a problem in the hall of Congress, but when Dingell was booked to appear on The Daily Show with John Stewart, his staff felt the need to finally warn and educate him. When his chief of staff shared the other meaning of “tea bagger” with Dingell, the Congressman went through three different stages of reaction. At first, he said “hah,” then said “that’s disgusting,” and finally the octogenarian congressman reached the plain of acceptance and said, “It’s funny and I’m going to keep using it.”

A Surprising Benefit of Romney's Attempt to Shift To The Middle

Will this presdidential election season bring at least a temporary end to gridlock in Washington? It is early yet, but it sure seems that way. 

Student loan interest rates are about to go up in a big way, and President Obama is currently making a push for a continued low rate on these loans:

Courting college voters, President Barack Obama said Tuesday that Congress needs to keep the cost of college loans from skyrocketing for millions of students, taking an important election-year message to three states crucial to his bid to hold onto the White House.

Obama told students at the University of North Carolina that he personally understood the burden of college costs, noting that he and first lady Michelle Obama had "been in your shoes" and didn't pay off their student loans until eight years ago.

"I didn't just read about this. I didn't just get some talking points about this. I didn't get a policy briefing on this," Obama said, recalling he and his wife shared a "mountain of debt" not a long time ago. "When we married, we got poor together."

My first thought on reading this is that there is no way the GOP will support Obama's proposal. After all, they haven't agreed with him on anything, even to the point of rejecting Republican ideas (e.g., Pay-Go, the Bipartisan Deficit Commission, the Individual Health Care Mandate, Cap and Trade, trying terrorism suspects in federal court) merely because Obama embraced them.

Well, the incredible just happened. The de facto leader of the Republican Party just embraced one of Obama's ideas:

"I support extending the temporary relief on interest rates for students," Romney said Monday, a day before five states hold primaries, though he did not offer specifics on how the extension should be paid for or how long it should last. He said he supports the extension because of "extraordinarily poor conditions in the job market."

In other words, Romney's need to shed his self-described severe conservatism in order to appeal to moderate voters may actually cause something to get done in Washington.  It's one thing for the GOP to oppose everything Obama supports, but it is going to be hard for Republicans to go against their presidential nominee during the run-up to what will undoubtedly be a very close General Election.

As politics go, this is a pretty amazing turn of events, and I hope -- for the country's sake -- we see more of it.

My Biggest Problem With Obama?

That's easy: He enacts health care reform -- the first president to do so after a century of other administrations trying and failing -- and then literally does nothing to promote it. The result of this failure is that the GOP has been able to frame ObamaCare as socialist legislation that will hurt small business, even though the centerpiece of the legislation -- the individual mandate -- was originally a Republican idea that the GOP proposed in order to solve the health care crisis while at the same time preserving the private market place.

I recently witnessed first-hand the result of Obama failing to promote his own policy. I was talking to a Republican friend of mine about ObamaCare, and this guy -- who is a small-business owner -- whipped out the GOP talking point that it hurts small business. I responded that it doesn't do so at all because the legislation contains health care tax credits for small business. My friend's response? He told me he did not know that.

This is Obama's fault, plain and simple; and ironically, this failure to promote his own legislation is actually hurting small business:

4.4 million small-business owners are now eligible for health care tax credits, yet only 360,000 have used them. These credits cover 35% of health care costs for small-business owners and up to 50% starting in 2014.

It's easy to be pissed off at Republicans for openly lying about ObamaCare, but being mad at the GOP over this is like being mad at a shark for biting your arm off. After all, prominent members of the GOP are openly bragging about their party's refusal to compromise with Obama and the Democrats on anything, and Mitch McConnell flat-out stated a couple years ago that the goal of the Republican Party is simply to defeat Obama in 2012.

So it should come as no shock to anyone that the GOP is lying about ObamaCare, and it's the president's duty to respond to these lies by promoting his own legislation. Obama has failed miserably in that regard.

Finally