July 7, 2011 / by emptywheel

 

David Plouffe’s “Same Old War Horses”

Scarecrow, Digby, and Jon Walker rightly took David Plouffe’s promises that a 9% unemployment rate won’t hurt Obama’s reelection chances to task.

But I’m at least as appalled by this part of Plouffe’s statement:

The White House’s top political adviser, downplaying the significance of the unemployment rate in the 2012 election, said the Republican candidates are offering the same policies that caused the economic crisis and targeted one potential opponent — Mitt Romney.

“So all of them are basically just bringing out the same old war horses,” senior adviser David Plouffe said yesterday at a Bloomberg Breakfast in Washington. “Let Wall Street kind of run amok, cut taxes for the wealthy, starve investment in things like education, research and development.”

Let Wall Street run amok. Check.

Cut taxes for the wealthy. Check.

And while Obama hasn’t as obviously starved investment in education and R&D (indeed, the stimulus he doesn’t like to talk about increased investments in both), by insisting on deficit reduction at the same time as states have had (or pretended they had to) cut education and R&D to balance their budgets, he has allowed such cuts to happen on his watch.

It troubles me a bit that David Plouffe doesn’t even see the irony of his statement.  Sure, the Republicans will be running on all those things. But so will, to a large extent, Obama.

Copyright © 2011 emptywheel. All rights reserved.
Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2011/07/07/david-plouffes-same-old-war-horses/