Michael Gerson protests too much

By Greg Sargent

Former Bushie Michael Gerson has a column up today ridiculing the notion -- pushed by some liberal commentators -- that Republicans have prioritized the destruction of President Obama above all else. He claims the argument that Republicans are out to "sabotage" the economy in advance of 2012 is proof that liberals are paranoid and delusional.

Steve Benen, one of Gerson's targets, defends himself here. And I hope Gerson will answer the question I've laid out for him below.

First, let's stipulate that it's largely fruitless to charge that Republicans are planning to actively sabotage the economy. You can't prove such a thing, and I doubt that this argument would be politically effective. The public won't buy it, and in any case, people just want the economy to turn around and will tune this kind of thing out as Beltway white noise.

However, there is one aspect of Gerson's argument that can be directly challenged with an existing body of facts and empirical evidence. I'm talking about his mockery of the idea that some Republicans calculated early on that denying Obama successes was paramount in order for them to mount a political comeback:

It is difficult to overstate how offensive elected Republicans find the sabotage accusation, which Obama himself has come very close to making. During the run-up to the midterm election, the president said at a town hall meeting in Racine, Wis.: "Before I was even inaugurated, there were leaders on the other side of the aisle who got together and they made the calculation that if Obama fails, then we win." Some Republican leaders naturally took this as an attack on their motives. Was the president really contending that Republican representatives want their constituents to be unemployed in order to gain a political benefit for themselves?

Note the clever sleight of hand here: In the quote provided by Gerson, Obama doesn't actually say that GOP representatives "want their constituents to be unemployed," as Gerson paraphrases. Rather, Obama simply says that GOP leaders calculated that they needed to deny Obama successes for their own political purposes.

And guess what: Some Republicans have actually admitted on the record that this was indeed the case. Here, for instance, is Mitch McConnell, in March of 2010, stating outright that Republicans calculated that they had to deny Obama bipartisan support on health reform at all costs -- the specifics of the legislation be damned -- specifically because the public would perceive it as a victory for Obama and Dems and would be more likely to support his initiative:

"It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out," Mr. McConnell said about the health legislation in an interview, suggesting that even minimal Republican support could sway the public. "It's either bipartisan or it isn't."

More famously, Jim DeMint said outright that defeating health reform was crucial if Republicans were to succeed in destroying Obama:

"If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him. And we will show that we can, along with the American people, begin to push those freedom solutions that work in every area of our society."

More recently, of course, McConnell flatly stated that his primary goal is to ensure Obama is a "one term president," and even subsequently doubled down on that assertion.

By the way: I don't particularly care if the paramount goal of some Republicans is the destruction of Obama's presidency. They are the opposition party. Taking them at their word that they view Obama's ideology and general governing agenda as overwhelmingly wrongheaded and potentially destructive to America, obviously they would try to weaken or politically destroy him.

But there's no denying that some Republicans did, in fact, make the clear calculation that denying Obama successes at all costs, regardless of the substance of specific initiatives or any willingness on his part to make concessions, was the best way to accomplish this overarching political goal. They said so themselves! It would be interesting to hear Gerson directly engage these McConnell and DeMint quotes and explain why they don't directly support this general interpretation of what happened in the last two years.

After the jump, a few more links.



* The Obama administration rallies Jewish groups to pressure Senate Republicans to support New START, arguing that GOP failure to do so could enable a nuclear Iran, something Senate Republicans are supposed to be strongly against.

* Senator Jon Kyl raises the bar yet again, insisting that he needs proof that the Obama administration is committed "in the heart" to nuclear modernization, even as he concedes the administration is intellectually committed to it:

"I've come to the conclusion that the administration is intellectually committed to modernization now. No sane person could not reach that conclusion," he said. "Whether they're committed in the heart is another matter."

* Get ready: John Judis says Obama's failure to exploit the Great Recession to produce an enduring Dem majority means a brutal partisan struggle for dominance in the years ahead, with no clear winner for some time to come.

* And Obama has no regrets whatsoever about passing health reform:

"I am absolutely confident that when we fully implemented health care, and we started to see those costs go down and we have seen people who don't have health insurance get health insurance, and we have seen families who have health insurance more secure and they are not being jerked around by arbitrary rules from their insurance companies, that that's gonna be a lasting legacy that I am extraordinarily proud of."



UPDATE, 1:26 p.m.: First item edited slightly for precision.

