Make The Connection

by Steve

So now we have two polls (Marist and Washington Post) in the space of a week that shows Americans are strongly against the GOP/Ryan plan and against cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and in favor of making the wealthy pay more in taxes. And yet both polls show that the GOP has yet to pay a price for advocating such unpopular policies, whereas Obama has yet to benefit from opposing such things. Why?

Perhaps it’s because in an era where a large part of the electorate is uneducated and gets its view of the world from Fox, the public still doesn’t grasp that these unpopular policies are exactly what the GOP is advocating. This is why Obama is out on the stump, finally pinpointing differences between himself and the GOP, and specifically talking about Ryan’s plan by name. Sure, he’s in campaign mode now, which for Obama means he has morphed once again into a quasi-populist for purely political purposes. Yet even in his Facebook appearance yesterday, Obama failed to make the one lethal linkage between the Ryan cuts and the unpopular tax policies the GOP is advocating: namely that the GOP wants to use the Medicare cuts not for deficit reduction, but to finance another round of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

The GOP can’t sell the Ryan plan, even in Ryan’s own district. Obama needs to do more road shows to explain exactly what’s in the Ryan plan and what the GOP wants, but he needs to go a step farther and show the electorate who the GOP wants to hurt and who the GOP wants to favor once again. I realize it's hard for a man who's default position is compromise to become a bare-knuckled fighter, but speaking the truth about one's enemies should be easy, even for a wimp.