Hot New Democrat Party Talking Point - The 'Republican Congress'

The excellent website 'Hot Air' has highlighted in this post what is one of the new campaign talking points from the Democrat Party.  It's a talking point meme that is based on failure, misdirection, and heavily depends on both the active assistance of the mainstream media as well as the lack of interest / attention / knowledge that is unfortunately too ingrained in too many American citizens.

“I’m the first one to acknowledge that the relations between myself and the Republican Congress have not been good over the last several months, but it’s not for lack of effort,” Obama told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos earlier this month…

Hot Air's article by Allahpundit highlights more examples that are promoting the talking point that the real problems being faced by the Obama Administration are related to the challenges they are getting from the 'Republican Congress'.  Allahpundit notes that this is a shrewd strategy since the approval ratings of Congress are far lower than the President's approval ratings.  It also provides a target for the finger point of blame that is coming from the President and his Administration for the failure to create a viable and robust economic recovery over the last three years.

Effectively, the Administration, through the assistance of the media to support this meme, is going to be campaigning on the fact that a 'do-nothing' 'Republican Congress' is the barrier to the Government enacting the programs needed to stimulate the economy, reduce unemployment, and end the stagnant recovery.  They will be pointing to the defeat of the latest Obama 'Jobs Bill', the one that had to be 'passed right now' in the Senate as Exhibit #1 of the obstructionism of the 'Republican Congress'.

Exhibit #2 will likely be the efforts and possible failure of the Debt Reduction Supercommittee to try to identify $1.2 Trillion of spending cuts over the next 10 years (out of about $38-$40 Trillion of spending over the next decade) in order to fulfill their mandate.  The latest Democrat proposal calls for over $1 Trillion in new tax increases to accompany any spending reductions - which Republicans on the committee have pretty well rejected.  The fault - according to the Democrats and their active media supporters is entirely on the 'unreasonable' Republicans.

The mainstream media bias goes a long way to help promote these memes.  The target of these efforts are those independents and middle of the spectrum American's who aren't political junkies.  They don't follow these issues closely and when they get their news, it comes from TV news or newspapers or word of mouth from someone else who pays attention to those elements.  Because they don't follow the political issues closely - do they really know and understand that for the first 2 years of the Obama Administration, it was a Democrat Congress.....the party of the President held dominate majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate?

Are they aware that even with these dominating majorities, the passage of many legislative elements of the President's radical agenda was extremely difficult.  While a $817B Stimulus, Obamacare, and Dodd / Frank were passed on a party line vote, other initiatives like Cap and Trade failed. Then there were the 'regular' duties of Congress that were dropped - like the failure to pass a Highway Appropriations Bill in 2009, or even a formal Federal Budget for FY2010, FY2011, and FY2012.

After the mid-term elections of 2010, the Republican record setting gains in the House provided them with control of the House of Representatives.  However, they fell 4 seats short of gaining the majority in the Senate.  That means that the Democrats still control the Senate.  This isn't a 'Republican Congress' but a split Congress. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) controls the Senate agenda.  He is the one who, when faced with the President demanding 'pass this bill now' referencing his latest Jobs Bill, refused to schedule the bill for debate or a vote for over a month because he lacked the votes in his Democrat caucus to move the bill forward.  He is the leader responsible for the Senate's inability to pass a Federal Budget for almost 950 days.  He is the leader responsible for the setting of the Senate's scheduling - and is failing to do so in order to support the meme that the obstructionism comes from the Republicans.  The facts that the challenges in the Senate come from the inability for the Senate Democrat majority, 22 of whom are up for re-election in 2012, are unable to agree on major elements of the President's agenda are dismissed.

The effort to disprove the fallacy of the 'Republican Congress' takes very little effort or attention.  The solution and answer is quite open for anyone to see if they open their eyes and look beyond the newsbite / mainstream media propaganda.  The fact that so many American's don't have the basic interest to do so says a lot about our society and interests....none of which is very commendable.