Out of the Foxhole

“That’s not true.”
- President Obama answering questions at the Republican Congressional Retreat in Baltimore

On Friday, President Obama took the fight to the Republican Congressional delegation at their retreat in Baltimore. The Republicans have, over the past 30 years, been excellent in controlling their message and the idea markets. How else can they still be perceived as the party of fiscal responsibility after the deficits of Reagan and both Bushes?

So it was very surprising that they allowed the President’s speech and subsequent Q & A to be televised.

What the country then witnessed, was one of the few times in which the competing ideas of what America is and what America should be was debated in the open, outside the Kabuki theatre of a Presidential or a congressional “debate.”

There for all the country to see was President Obama meeting every Republican “talking point” with fact. Did you want to confront Obama on how much the deficit has grown since he had been in office? Then you better be prepared to sit and hear him recite how much the deficit had grown under Bush. Do you dare to make the same assertion on unemployment? Then you will have to listen to him layout unemployment figures for the first quarter of 2009 that could only be attributed to Bush.

The President’s successful week also underscored how fast the idea market can change. In less than three days, Obama went from being ridiculed for being too cool, to being shown over and over on television as a passionate and fierce advocate for his ideas. The Republicans went from being in total control of their message to having to defend their stance at every turn.
Obama put on a clinic in meeting the opposition head on and puncturing their own foolishness. It was a clinic for the Democrats as well, who have spent so much time since the Scott Brown election, cowering in the corner.

Democrats need to understand that they hold a fairly strong hand. They have a historic majority in both the House and the Senate and they have a popular President in the White House.
Voter Party identification also favors them.

In an NBC/WSJ poll taken between 1/23 and 1/25/2010 more voters identified themselves as “Independent” than either Democrat or Republican. There was a 16 pt. gap between the number of voters who identified themselves as Independent and those who identified themselves as Republicans, but only a 9 pt. gap between Independents and Democrats. (http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/party-id.php).

In order to win, if their base will allow it, Republicans will need to attract a lot more Independents than the Democrats do.

All Republican victories since Obama’s election have come with candidates (Brown in Mass, Chris Christie in NJ, and Bob McDonnell in Va) who were either moderates or hid their conservative roots while running against weak Democrats. All three won with support from Independents. The one candidate (Doug Hoffman in the special election in NY-23) who ran as an unabashed Tea Party candidate with heavy support from the Republican red meat base, lost.

The Republicans are caught in a major civil war. While the House Republicans were getting their facts checked by the President, the Republican National Committee was in Hawaii debating whether or not to enforce a purity test on their candidates. In the end they compromised and voted to “strongly recommend” that the Party support only those candidates who agreed with at least 8 of 10 statements of principle.

The only other headline from the winter meeting was Gov. Linda Ling of Hawaii begging her fellow committee members not to humiliate Michael Steele in her State.

So while the Republican National Committee was passing up a golden opportunity to rebut Obama’s rebukes in his State of the Union in favor of trying to decide who they should drum out of the Party, the Republican Congressional delegation was left to defend ideas such as their budget proposal from the previous year that did not contain any numbers, and health care proposals that they themselves refused to move forward when they were in power.

Like a good commander who stands up under fire to lead his trapped and frightened troops forward, Obama stood up and laid out for the Democrats the attacks they need to make over the next year, in order to move forward and stay in power.

In taking on the Republicans head on in Baltimore the President showed Democrats that the only thing they have to fear is fear itself.

Let’s hope Democrats come out of their foxholes and take up the fight.