A party without a vision and carrying out a stupid strategy.
I wish I could be in the room for some of the GOP leadership’s strategy sessions these days, because, in all honesty, I haven’t got a clue what they think is going on.
The latest economic numbers have unemployment down slightly for the first time since April of ‘08, GDP fell less than expected, the stock market has climbed to levels we haven’t seen since last November and the dollar rose against both the Yen and the Euro. Sure, there’s a lot more to these numbers the further into them you delve, but, as has become abundantly clear over the course of this recession, emotional responses matter just as much as salient details. The Republicans, fresh off their effort to sell this as Obama’s economy, now face the problem of convincing the public of the exact opposite, that improvements in a number of indicators have, in fact, nothing to do with the President’s efforts. No one saw that possibility coming? Is their ideology so blinding that they never even considered that the stimulus could, in fact, have a beneficial effect on the economy? And here I was thinking the planning sessions for the Iraq War were a fluke. Continue reading…