www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0123-krauthammer-20120121,0,5519935.column
chicagotribune.com
January 21, 2012
"Are you better off today than you were $4 trillion ago?"
— Rick Perry, former presidential candidate
WASHINGTON
— It's the campaign line of the year, and while the author won't be
carrying it into the general election, the eventual nominee will.
The
charge is straightforward: President Barack Obama's reckless spending
has dangerously increased the national debt while leaving unemployment
high and the economy stagnant. Concurrently, he has vastly increased the
scope and reach of government with new entitlements and oppressive
regulation, with higher taxes to come (to offset the unprecedented
spending).
In 2010, that narrative carried the Republicans to
historic electoral success. Through most of 2011, it dominated
Washington discourse. The air was filled with debt talk: ceilings,
supercommittees, Simpson-Bowles.
What's the incumbent to do? He
admits current conditions are bad. He knows that his major legislative
initiatives — Obamacare, the near-trillion-dollar stimulus, (the
rejected) cap-and-trade — are unpopular. If you can't run on stewardship
or policy, how do you win re-election?
Create an entirely new
narrative. Push an entirely new issue. Change the subject from your
record and your ideology, from massive debt and overreaching government,
to fairness and inequality. Make the election a referendum on which
party really cares about you, (QUICK HINT: NEITHER PARTY CARES ABOUT YOU< UNLESS YOU ARE RICH OR A GINORMOUS MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATION) which party will stand up to the greedy
rich.
This charge, too, is straightforward: The Republicans serve
as the protectors and enablers of the plutocrats, the exploiters who
have profited while America suffers. They put party over nation, fat-cat
donors over people, political power over everything. (Just like the democrats do, too)
It's all
rather uncomplicated, capturing nicely the Manichaean core of the Occupy
movement — blame the rich, then soak them. (SOAK THEM? SOAK THEM? SOAK THEM? I think they should (almost) all be drowned and their progeny shipped off to mars.)But the real beauty of this
strategy is its adaptability. While its first target was the do-nothing
protect-the-rich Congress, it is perfectly tailored to fit the
liabilities of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney — plutocrat,
capitalist, 1 percenter.
Obama rolled out this class-war
counter-narrative in his Dec. 6 "Teddy Roosevelt" speech and hasn't
governed a day since. Every action, every proposal, every "we can't
wait" circumvention of the Constitution — such as recess appointments
when the Senate is not in recess — is designed to fit this re-election
narrative.
Hence: Where does Obama ostentatiously introduce the
recess-appointed head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
At a rally in swing-state Ohio, a stage prop for Obama to declare
himself tribune of the little guy, scourge of the big banks and their
soulless Republican guardians.
For the first few weeks, the
class-envy gambit had some effect, bumping Obama's numbers slightly. But
the story was still lagging, suffering in part from its association
with an Occupy rabble that had widely worn out its welcome.
Then
came the twist. Then came the most remarkable political surprise since
the 2010 midterm: The struggling Democratic class-war narrative is
suddenly given life and legitimacy by … Republicans! Newt Gingrich and
Rick Perry make the case that private equity as practiced by Romney's
Bain Capital is nothing more than vulture capitalism looting companies
and sucking them dry while casually destroying the lives of workers. Which, by the way, OF COURSE IT IS!!!)
Richard
Trumka of theAFL-CIOnods approvingly. Filmmaker Michael Moore wonders
aloud whether Gingrich has stolen his staff. The assault on Bain/Romney
instantly turns Obama's class-war campaign from partisan attack into
universal complaint.
Suddenly Romney's wealth, practices and taxes
take center stage. And why not? If leading Republicans are denouncing
rapacious capitalism that enriches the 1 percent while impoverishing
everyone else, should this not be the paramount issue in a campaign
occurring at a time of economic distress?
Now, economic inequality
is an important issue, but the idea that it is the cause of America's
current economic troubles is absurd. (True enough, and yet, the conditions, the conomic and political conditions that PERMITTED Americans current economic troubles are in fact the exact reasons why America is in such a world of economic hurt, relatively speaking, because, you see, in America, even if you are broke, homeless, etc, you can survive, and fairly comfortable, if you know where to go and what to do!) Yet, in a stroke, the Republicans
have succeeded in turning a Democratic talking point — a last-ditch
attempt to salvage re-election by distracting from their record — into a
central focus of the nation's political discourse.
How quickly
has the zeitgeist changed? Wednesday, the Republican House reconvened to
reject Obama's planned $1.2 trillion debt-ceiling increase. (Lacking
Senate concurrence, the debt ceiling will be raised nonetheless.) No one
noticed.
This is no mainstream media conspiracy. This is the GOP maneuvering itself right onto Obama terrain. (Because, the would never run a viable candidate (Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin) and the rest of them are bat-shit ignorant.)
The
president is a very smart man. But if he wins in November, that won't
be the reason. It will be luck. He could not have chosen more
self-destructive adversaries. (But the Republicrats have been self-destructing ever since the days of Ronnie Ray-Gunn)
Washington Post Writers Group
Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington.
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