M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Obama: GOP is bamboozling Americans

President Barack Obama’s done running for office, but not making fun of Republicans.

In a speech to the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting Friday in Washington, Obama ripped into Hill Republicans — and Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in particular — for attempts to “spin” and “bamboozle” Americans by claiming to be for the middle class.


Mostly, Obama used the half-hour base-tending to promote his own record of job growth and make the case for the agenda that he’s been failing to get Congress to move on for over a year: immigration reform, raising the minimum wage, protecting equal pay, climate change.

“Here’s our program,” Obama called out to Republicans. “What’s yours? Tell us how you’d help middle class families. Because we’ve got an agenda. And we know it’s working.”

But he was clearly enjoying himself as he lit into his opponents more strongly.

“I just want everybody to remember that at every step as we made these policies, as we made this progress, we were told by our good friends the Republicans that our actions would crush jobs, and explode deficits and destroy the country,” he said.

“Their predictions of doom and gloom and death panels and Armageddon haven’t come true,” he said later. “Sky hasn’t fallen. Chicken Little’s quiet.”

Republicans aren’t serious when they talk about now being the party of the middle class, Obama said. If they were, they’d figure out a way to support his agenda.

What really got him going, though, was a shot at McConnell for claiming that the good economic numbers that started coming in at the end of the year were a response to the Republicans taking the majority in the Senate.

“Okay,” he said, a smile breaking across his face. “I didn’t know that’s how the economy works—but, maybe?”

Then he turned his attention to Paul, who’s said people should be heading to Obama’s neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago to scream about the economy.

“I think that’s encouraging that he wants to go to the South Side of Chicago,” Obama said.”I guarantee you that Sen. Paul would be welcome there. We are a friendly bunch,” Obama says noting he was just in Chicago’s South Side.”

Obama was introduced by a DNC video that promoted the same planks of his agenda he spent his speech rallying the crowd to—and even in front of a crowd that’s officially starting to look past him toward the next Democratic nominee, they gave him several standing ovations.

“That’s my president!” one woman shouted as he began to wrap up.

“That’s what we’re doing together,” Obama said, finishing his remarks. “Still moving forward.”