Praising with Faint Damns
Congressional Republicans go soft on Obama.
by Stephen F. Hayes
03/09/2009, Volume 014, Issue 24
Last week was a bad week for limited government. President Barack Obama offered a series of proposals that would increase federal spending from 22 percent of GDP to 28 percent. He proposed a health care reserve fund at a cost of $634 billion, and his advisers noted that this would be a mere "down payment" on a broader role in health care for the federal government. Oh, and the federal government took what could be a 40 percent stake in Citibank, accelerating the incremental nationalization of U.S. banking.
If all of this tells us anything, it's that Barack Obama has an abiding faith in big government. Yet he flat denied this--"I don't," he said--standing at the rostrum in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night.
Two days later, Obama released his budget. As it is drafted, the government will run annual deficits of at least $500 billion over the next decade--if we're lucky. Those estimates are based on the administration's own exceedingly optimistic projections of economic growth and rely on budget trickery that would make Enron accountants blush. Even the left seemed surprised at the big-government boldness of Obama's budget. Robert Reich, the liberal economist and secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, called it "audacious" because "it represents the biggest redistribution of income from the wealthy to the middle class and poor this nation has seen in more than 40 years."
The Republican response to all of this was tepid, even cautious. During Obama's speech to Congress, Republicans mostly applauded, sometimes politely, at other times enthusiastically. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was surprised and gratified by the support.
"I was awfully struck??.??.??.??that in the number of ovations that people gave during the speech, the amazing number that involved both sides of the aisle standing up and applauding," said Gibbs. He noted that such sessions are usually marked by the "seesaw" effect of Republicans and Democrats standing to applaud at different times. This was different. "I think last night, it seemed that on virtually every broad measure the president outlined in his speech, there was a reaction from both sides at the same time."
Responding to Obama's budget later in the week, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, a reliable conservative and usually one of the most aggressive and effective opponents of big government, offered only mild criticism. In a three-paragraph statement, McConnell agreed with Obama or praised him four separate times. He expressed "serious concerns" about the budget but had no harsh words for its sponsor, the president, reserving his criticism for "Washington."
John Boehner, the House minority leader, gave a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday. Boehner lamented this new enthusiasm for government, but other than one reference to "the Obama administration" and the coming "spending barrage," he reserved his criticism for congressional Democrats. "When you put this in the hands of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, it obviously became a gravy train for left-wing pork," he said of the stimulus package. Later, speaking about a measure that would prove fatal to school vouchers in Washington, D.C., Boehner said: "One day after President Obama gave a speech about hope, Nancy Pelosi passed a bill that takes away hope for thousands of American kids here in D.C. to have a chance at [a] decent education."
This has been the Republican strategy since Obama took office: Refrain from criticizing the president directly and praise his stated desire for bipartisanship; trash congressional Democrats as irresponsibly liberal and poor stewards of taxpayer dollars; offer alternative solutions to the country's problems even if the media pay them no attention.
The reasons for doing this are plain. The country was broadly enthusiastic about Obama's inauguration, and his popularity remains high. Concerns about the economy have led many voters to abandon--or at least set aside temporarily--their skepticism about big government. "There will be a time when we need to launch a full-scale assault on Obama," says Republican strategist Todd Harris. "But congressional liberals are the soft underbelly of fortress Obama and they're on the ballot sooner."
"People are rooting for the guy," says one Republican strategist who agrees with the current GOP strategy. "In that sense, attacking him means attacking voters' own hopes, dreams, and ambitions."
"We are not going to be personal," says one Republican leadership aide. "We are not going to call him a Communist. But we will be aggressively going after the policies."
It's a tough balance. Making congressional Democrats the focus of Republican attacks during the debate over the stimulus made some sense since Obama had, in effect, outsourced the writing of that legislation to Nancy Pelosi.
But avoiding criticism of Obama on the budget will be much tougher. It's his budget, after all. Challenging the policies without mentioning Obama fails to identify the policies as his. It renders the critiques weak and ineffective. And a growing number of conservatives on Capitol Hill are becoming impatient with the forced restraint.
"Expecting the American people to know what we're talking about by osmosis won't work," says Representative Tom Price, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a group of House conservatives with more than 100 members. Price has been sending out a steady stream of press releases, statements, and web videos that are far more confrontational towards Obama than the Republican leadership has been. His members are eager to challenge the Obama administration and to confront the president by name.
"For us not to highlight the fallacy and the recklessness of this administration--we wouldn't be doing our job," says Price.
Representative Paul Ryan, a conservative from Wisconsin, says it's okay to criticize the president directly as long as the critiques are policy-focused. "If the White House brings us a bill to socialize medicine and pollsters tell us he's at 80 percent approval, it would [still] be a huge mistake to do anything but criticize it."
The stakes, he says, are too big to be restrained. "This is the greatest reorganization of government since the New Deal. We are fast becoming a social-welfare state like we see in Europe. For us to be worried about poll numbers and popularity ratings would be a mistake. We should not be."
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
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