My column
this weekend is about the almost comically poor lines of communication between
the White House and the Hill.
The opening anecdote was drawn from a background
briefing I attended with a respected Republican legislator who thought it would
be a gamechanger for President Obama to say he'd be open to chained CPI — a
policy that cuts Social Security benefits — as part of a budget deal.
Barack Obama
(Charles
Dharapak/AP)
The only
problem? Obama has said he's open to chained CPI as part of a budget deal. And
this isn't one of those times where the admission was in private, and we're
going off of news reports. It's right there on his Web site. It's literally in
bold type. But key GOP legislators have no idea Obama's made that concession.
The question
my column left open was whether improving the lines of communication would
actually change anything. Chait's view is no, it wouldn't. He begins by quoting
Upton Sinclair's famous line: "It is impossible to make a man understand
something if his livelihood depends on not understanding it." Chait
continues:
If Obama could get hold of Klein’s mystery
legislator and inform him of his budget offer, it almost certainly wouldn’t
make a difference. He would come up with something – the cuts aren’t real, or
the taxes are awful, or they can’t trust Obama to carry them out, or something.
What happened
next on Twitter proved Chait's point in every particular.
Mike Murphy
is one of the top political consultants in the Republican Party. He's been a
top strategist for Mitt Romney, John McCain, Jeb Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger
and many other Republicans. He's also, as his client list would suggest, from
the party's more pragmatic, even moderate, wing. Over the past few years, as
he's transitioned into doing more punditry, he's emerged as an invaluable guide
to what reasonable Republicans think of the rightward lurch in the GOP.
On Feb. 13,
Murphy wrote in Time that "six magic words can unlock the door to the
votes inside the Republican fortress: Some beneficiaries pay more and chained
CPI, budgetary code for slightly lowering benefit increases over time."
The only problem? Obama has said all these words, as John Harwood of the New
York Times quickly pointed out.
By Ezra
Klein, Published: March 2 at 3:19
File this
under "Jonathan Chait is right."
Posting Komentar