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Flap’s Links and Comments for April 13th on 10:12

April 13, 2011 /

These are my links for April 13th from 10:12 to 10:34:

  • Why Hasn’t Barack Obama Called Paul Ryan? – If the president were truly interested in a “spirit of cooperation,” such a conversation would seem a logical place to start. After all, Ryan has spent the better part of the past decade studying America’s fiscal health and more than anyone in Congress has proposed serious solutions to avert the coming debt crisis.

    So how did their conversation go?

    It never happened. A spokesman for Ryan confirms that there has been no call since the president said he would reach out on February 15.

    If that’s a sign of Obama’s commitment to a “spirit of cooperation,” it’s not a good one. 

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    Because Obama is "The One."

    Actually, it is because the GOP has Obama in a box and he doesn't know what to do.

  • Why is Obama talking to us today? – A Republican communications guru also takes a dim view of the effort, telling me, “This speech, to me, is incredibly reactionary, as is everything they seem to do at the White House. Paul Ryan made a big splash with his plan, and now the White House is playing catch-up. Notice that the speech is in middle of the day and not at the White House but instead at George Washington University. So, it’s a ‘major-minor’ speech?” The guru sees a White House obsessed with spin: “All the White House believes the president has to do with this speech is reclaim the headlines. So, he just has to sound good. In their mind, he could be reading out of the phone book.”

    George W. Bush’s press secretary Dana Perino doesn’t think much of sending the president out either. She says she wouldn’t advise the president to give such a speech, “but, then again, I would not have put forward his budget. I suppose they think they’ve really got the GOP in a corner now.”

    But rather it’s Obama who finds himself in a box. He recaptures the center and endorses specific entitlement reforms? He sends his base around the bend. He talks generalities or tax hikes? The independents roll their eyes in disgust. Sometimes if you don’t have anything productive to say it’s best to say nothing at all. But that is not the mindset of the White House, which still is fixated on the notion that Obama can convince the voters of things that simply aren’t so. Have those officials read the polls on ObamaCare lately? And was the 2010 midterms just a fluke in their minds?

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    President Obama and the Dems are playing defense