We've been tracking President Obama's economic message for the 2010 midterms, and today he's started zeroing in on Republicans. Here are some excerpts from his speech this afternoon in Carnegie Mellon, PA, which include some of the harshest characterizations of conservative thought that we've seen from the president:
…But to be fair, a good deal of the other party’s opposition to our agenda has also been rooted in their sincere and fundamental belief about government. It’s a belief that government has little or no role to play in helping this nation meet our collective challenges. It’s an agenda that basically offers two answers to every problem we face: more tax breaks for the wealthy and fewer rules for corporations.
…As November approaches, leaders in the other party will campaign furiously on the same economic argument they’ve been making for decades. Fortunately, we don’t have to look back too many years to see how it turns out. For much of the last ten years, we tried it their way. They gave tax cuts that weren’t paid for to millionaires who didn’t need them. They gutted regulations, and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight. They shortchanged investments in clean energy and education; in research and technology. And despite all their current moralizing about the need to curb spending, this is the same crowd who took the record $237 billion surplus that President Clinton left them and turned it into a record $1.3 trillion deficit.
So we already know where their ideas led us. And now we have a choice as a nation. We can return to the failed economic policies of the past, or we can keep building a stronger future. We can go backward, or we can keep moving forward.
The last paragraph is essentially the Democrats' argument for 2010. This will cheer Democratic political operatives who worried that the president's refusal to confront Republicans would leave his congressional allies blowing in the breeze. It's a two-part bank shot that Democrats are planning for 2010: Make the race a choice between competing agendas -- not a referendum -- and highlight enough early returns on the Democrats' program to lead voters to re-elect the governing party.
-- Tim Fernholz
