California Conservative

Jim Carville and Paul Begala haven’t had an original thought in almost 20 years. Their scorched earth campaign strategies sound whiny on the best of days. Jim Carville’s op-ed in this morning’s Financial Times tells Democrats that Martha Coakley would’ve won the Massachusetts special election if they would’ve pointed their fingers at President Bush more. Now he’s telling Democrats to adopt a ‘it’s all Bush’s fault’ campaign strategy:

Democrats would not be playing the blame game with one another for the loss or for the healthcare debacle if they had only pointed fingers at those (or in this case, the one) who put Americans (and most of the world) in the predicament we’re in: George W. Bush.

I hope Democrats take Mr. Carville’s advice. Nothing says ‘we don’t have ideas’ quite like looking backwards. The country knows that the financial crisis happened on President Bush’s watch. They’re more worried about fixing this country’s problems. People will ignore the blame game messages if they aren’t followed by common sense solutions, something that the Democrats are in extremely short supply of.

Elections are about the future, especially this one. People have noticed that the Democrats’ policies have made things worse, not better. Seniors know that cutting Medicare by $460,000,000,000 will limit the amount of health care that they get.

Blaming President Bush won’t win back seniors.

People have noticed that the $787,000,000,000 stimulus plan hasn’t created jobs, that it’s only created mountains of debt. Holding health care negotiations behind closed doors without any GOP input has turned off independents.

Blaming President Bush for starting the recession won’t win back those independents.

Complaining about President Bush’s deficits won’t get much traction because the Democrats’ record on deficits since retaking Congress in 2006 has been terrible. Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit, and Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey point out the foolishness of that strategy. Here’s what Jim has to say on the matter:

During the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on 9-11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop. In 2004 the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005 it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006 the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007 it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth. These were amazing accomplishments considering the unexpected challenges. You certainly didn’t read much about this in the press.

But, things changed in 2007. Democrats took over Congress, gas prices started to rise, and at the end of the year and into 2008 several financial institutions started to crumble as the housing bubble began to burst. Of course, it should be noted that President Bush publicly called for the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 17 times in 2008 alone before Congress acted. Democrats, on the other hand, blocked reform numerous times. It was later reported after the 2008 election that Bush had nothing to do with the financial crisis. Hoover Institution visiting fellow Scott S. Powell wrote in Barron’s in February of 2009 that the present crisis began in the 1970s, during the Carter administration, with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities. This risk was acknowledged in the Bush administration’s first fiscal-year budget, released in April 2001. Sadly these warnings were ignored by Congress.

Here’s Ed’s take on what will have more impact in 2010:

While the Democrats desperately keep hold of their favorite cartoon villain, who is as relevant to American politics now as Bill Clinton, Republicans have Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, and that’s going to be much more likely to resonate with voters in 2010. The midterms will be a referendum on both politicians and the radical direction of their leadership and agenda. Which will voters care about more, a former President who has no impact on the political agenda of the federal government, or the two people who attempted to conduct a takeover of 1/6th of the American economy while ignoring the loss of 3.4 million jobs?

Call me fickle but I’m betting that voters will take whatever frustrations they have out on Democrats, not Republicans.

Simply put, I pray that Democrats employ Carville’s strategy. Combining the Democrats’ failed policies of the past 4 years with an incessant whining that essentially says that they don’t have solutions is a great way of saying that Democrats are the party of no solutions.

Why vote for people that won’t put in place policies that create jobs?

Technorati Tags: Elections, James Carville, Paul Begala, Blame Bush, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Unemployment, Deficits, Stimulus, Banking Crisis, Democrats, President Bush, Republicans, Election 2010

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 8:15 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Democrats, Economy, Election 2010, Energy, Obama, Pelosi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.