Begala: Thank You, Rush Limbaugh
..........the GOP is following the strategy of its intellectual leader, Rush Limbaugh, who famously said of the president, “I hope he fails.”
The Republicans seem to believe that if they tank the economy, they will be able to take down Obama and then rule over the ruins. Back in 2010, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell declared that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” And the single best way to defeat Obama is to sabotage the economy.
But there’s just one problem with that strategy: the Republicans have no choice but to pursue it in broad daylight. And the trouble is, if they kill Obama’s middle-class tax cut, and Obama’s American Jobs Act, and his extension of unemployment benefits, and everything else he’s advocating to revive the economy, then fair-minded voters will likely blame the Republicans, and not the president, for the catastrophic results.
I cannot think of a time when the economy declined but the president was not blamed—but this may be the first. If the Republicans were smart, they would do on taxes what they did on trade: quietly pass Obama’s proposals, knowing full well that even a million new jobs will not be enough to climb out of the hole Obama inherited. (Fourteen million Americans are unemployed.) The economy isn’t giving Obama enough jobs, but the Republicans are giving him the next best thing: a villain to blame for the poor economy. By killing Obama’s jobs agenda, Republicans may just save his presidency.
MORE:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/12/11/how-rush-limbaugh-helped-hand-the-election-to-obama.html
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