Perino: Obama?s ?Relationship? With Americans Is Like My ?Friends Lamenting The Distance? With Their Boyfriends
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on September 4th, 2010 4:38 am by HL
Fox News contributor and former Bush White House Press Secretary Dana Perino has an interesting column up on FoxNews.com today. Perino appears to be very concerned about President Obama’s “relationship” with America. Looking back to the early days of Obama’s presidency — when “America was excited about its new relationship” with the country’s first African-American president — Perino digs deep into her vault of keen-eyed political analysis, looks at where Obama is today, and likens his relationship with the American people to her single friends’ bad romances with their boyfriends:
The coverage of the growing disconnect between President Obama and America reminds me of some of my single friends lamenting the distance they feel with their boyfriends. For some of them, there’s a pattern — intense excitement at the promise of a new relationship, followed by bewilderment and anger as it starts to unravel, and ending in broken hearts and healing mantras of, “He just wasn’t right for me.” […]
But hope sprang eternal – until another few months passed, and America started feeling jilted. “He just doesn’t understand me. He just doesn’t GET me. And, what’s worse, he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t. Lately I feel like he’s just saying what he thinks I want to hear. It’s like he’s just going through the motions.”.
But lucky for the President, the former Bush flack has some relationship advice. The President should “show us he cares,” Perino says:
In some relationships, couples seek counseling to work it out. The man might promise to try to pay more attention to the woman, to actually listen rather than just pretend to, and to show more emotion. She might agree to give him more space, support him more and nag him less. This can go on for a while, and sometimes people are able to work it out – if both parties are willing.
However, Perino doesn’t think Obama is going to work it out with the American people. “In the relationship between America and the president, it’s not clear that either party is willing to do what it takes to make it work,” she says, predicting that after the mid-terms, “many people are going to decide that it’s time they started seeing other people.” Let’s face it Mr. President, according to Perino, the American people are just not that into you.
In their quest to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans, many leading Republicans have invented a fantasy world in which tax cuts always pay for themselves through increased economic growth. Extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich would cost $830 billion in lost revenue over the next ten years, but nonetheless, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) claimed, “You should never have to offset cost” of tax cuts, while Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) said, “tax cuts should not have to be offset.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) went a step further, falsely claiming that the Bush tax cuts have actually “increased revenue.”
But on CNBC today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking GOP member on the House Budget Committee, splashed some cold water on that delusion, saying dismissively, “I’m not one of these people who says that say that all tax cuts pay for themselves”:
ZANDI: Congressman, the president has proposed allowing the tax rates for upper income individuals to rise back to where they were in the 1990s, the CBO says that’s going to cost $700 billion over the next ten years. Do you those estimates are correct?
RYAN: I actually, I don’t think they’re correct. … But the CBO just gave us a report, Mark, the other day, that said that if we allow these top tax rates to expire, it’s going to cost us 1.25 million jobs next year, it’s going to shave off a full percentage point off of GDP, and it’s going to slow down the economy.
QUICK: But Paul, you just quoted the CBO on those numbers, but disagreed with them on the others. Where did CBO get it wrong on the other numbers?
RYAN: Well, on the revenues, because I believe you’ll get faster economic growth. Look, I’m not one of these people who says that all tax cuts pay for themselves, but tax cuts on the margins is where the growth occurs. And that does make a difference.
Watch it:
Ryan has received tremendous praise from his GOP colleagues for his supposed policy knowledge and economic smarts. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called Ryan “sharp,” while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich labeled him “extraordinarily formidable,” and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) touted that Republicans, “led by Congressman Paul Ryan, have already identified $1.3 trillion in specific spending cuts.” Indeed, Paul is absolutely correct that tax cuts don’t always pay for themselves.
However, his smarts didn’t stop him from contradicting himself seconds before that moment of lucidity in the CNBC interview. As host Becky Quick pointed out, Ryan quoted the Congressional Budget Office approvingly when their numbers supported his argument, but questioned their estimates moments earlier when they did not fit his narrative.
