Cantor, Pence, Boehner Promise Republican Road to Recovery, Deliver Dead End
After months of complaining about too few tax cuts for the rich, after weeks of claiming Obama’s budget ”spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much,” after days of trying to blame Democrats and Obama for everything from the AIG bonuses to paling around with Jay Leno, the Republicans Thursday introduced their much-heralded budget.
Calling Obama’s “the most fiscally irresponsible budget in American history,” Mike Pence promised a Republican alternative that would be ”leaner”, “with lower taxes, lower spending, and lower borrowing.” Introducing it as the “Republican Road to Recovery”, Whip Eric Cantor touted the GOP’s budget, stating it would “pull back to the middle” government spending. In advance of Thursday’s press conference, the GOP released this memo Wednesday:
“Given the President’s comments [Tuesday] night that, ‘we haven’t seen a budget out of [Republicans],’ we wanted to make sure to make you all aware [sic] that we are introducing our Republican Budget Alternative tomorrow.”
Saying, “We have a plan, yes, we have ideas”, Cantor took the opportunity yesterday, as they were about to unveil their budget, to further state that Republicans had alternative stimulus and housing plans, promising “we will have a healthcare plan, we will have an energy plan.”
Sounds like they’ve been hard at work. If they have, they haven’t any proof. Cantor, Pence, and Boehner have all been following the “less is more” paradigm. Their promises of delivering a “real budget” are campaign echoes of McCain promising to “find bin Laden” and “end the war in Iraq”. “I know how, my friends.” Cantor delivered an eighteen page budget. Eighteen pages. Some high school papers are longer. Not including footnotes.
“But, when pressed for the details on how the GOP plan differed from the President’s, Boehner acknowledged he didn’t have many. “This is a blueprint for where we’re going,” Boehner said.”
The White House’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs quipped,
“It’s interesting to have a budget that doesn’t contain any numbers. I think the party of no has become the party of no new ideas.”
Speaking to NBC’s Mike Viqueira, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer displayed unusual ferocity:
“I am very frustrated Mike, because we were waiting for this, we cut away from the President to hear the big build-up. Republicans have a plan, they have ideas, they’re not the party of no and all I heard in that news conference was what they don’t like about the president’s plan.”
Brewer continued,
“We’ve heard them and today you get us all hyped up and you have our undivided attention and what happens when you get up and repeat the same criticism we’ve already heard. I didn’t hear ideas. I heard the promise of ideas, and we’re going to have more on x, y and z, but I didn’t hear the ideas.”
Time and again the Republicans have promised one thing and, unable to deliver, given us another. “Greeted as liberators!” “Compassionate Conservatism.” “Restore honor to the Oval Office.” “We do not torture.” ”We have a plan, yes, we have ideas.” The American people are tired of the false promises, tired of the “bait and switch”, and wise to the fact that there’s little thought behind all that exhaust.
Right now, the wise Republican would pick and choose his battles. Right now, the wise Republican would pull back, take some time to formulate a real plan, with real numbers, real goals, real ideas. Right now, the wise Republican would let the Democrats battle each other, then drive up, having mapped out a better budget. The problem is, the Republican Road to Recovery is an eighteen page program that leads right back to the distillery of dead-end ideas. The problem is, on a Republican Road to Recovery, are there any wise Republicans left?