[Editor's note: We're delighted to welcome our old friend Murshed Zaheed to the C&L team. It's a name many of our readers will be familiar with, since we've cited him many times. He recently served as Director of Strategic Communications at Media Matters For America. Before MM, Murshed served as the Director of New Media for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Murshed also has worked in a number of political campaigns, including his time as a key member of Governor Howard Dean's Presidential Campaign's online and fund-raising team that revolutionized today’s political campaigns. Murshed currently works as a senior progressive Democratic strategist in D.C. We know you'll enjoy his work. -- DN]
First of all I want to say thanks to John Amato and his amazing C&L crew for giving me the wonderful opportunity to write at one of the premier progressive media outlets in America. I will chime in here every now and then based on my experience in the campaign, legislative and progressive online world on matters related to our village media culture and a crazy Republican party, which is now being led by bunch of fringe extremists. So, on that note, I wanted to zero in on a really ugly week for House Speaker John Boehner.
Boehner and his handlers thought they were going to set a smooth narrative around their crazy economic agenda in the DC/ NY traditional media bubble this week by scheduling a speech at the Economic Club of New York on Monday. Let’s just say things didn’t go too hot for Speaker Boehner. Let's start with the tenacious researchers from Media Matters Action Network. They basically took his pants down by exposing his bundle of lies. There were so many falsehoods in Boehner’s speech that MMAN crew had put together a glossary style table of content. Read the entire piece here.
Before anyone starts attacking the messenger by barking out tired and stale George Soros line to attack that MMAN link, let me just take you over to this brutal piece from Bloomberg just eviscerating “Boehner’s views on economy” by pointing out all the contradictions (Bloomberg folks are exceedingly polite, we can use the word “debunking”) from leading market indicators and government reports. It gets worse for the Speaker.
Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus called his remarks “incoherent, impervious-to-fact economic philosophy:”
“Even more alarming, because it has consequences beyond the debt-ceiling debate, is the incoherent, impervious-to-facts economic philosophy undergirding Boehner’s remarks…Listening to Boehner, I began to think the country suffers from two deficits: the gap between spending and revenue, and the one between reality and ideology. The first cannot be solved unless we find some way of at least narrowing the second.”
The New York Times editorial blasted the speech for being devoid of an accurate diagnosis or rigorous prescriptions for the debt Issue:
“Even before the White House and the Republicans began talks on the debt limit, John Boehner made clear that he was looking for a political fight, not a compromise. There is no way to solve the country’s fiscal ills without an accurate diagnosis and rigorous prescriptions for a cure. Mr. Boehner’s speech was devoid of both… [Boehner’s argument] makes no economic sense.”
As Steve Benen noted in his post PWNing the Speaker for an “economic vision based on fantasy, confusion, and lies,” Boehner looked like someone who had “no idea what he’s talking about.”
What Boehner is tried to do is pretty clear now. His economic nonsense about debt-ceiling has nothing to do with reducing our national debt. It had everything to do with playing politics and push longstanding, extreme right wing Republican ideas about size of government and rants against tax.
It’s too bad for Boehner. Not only is he a really bad liar, he is not all that good at politics either. It looks like Senate Republicans are already looking to throw him under the bus.
Guess a horrible weak for this embattled Speaker could get even worse. Stay tuned. It may not be too long before we see the pathological crier balling on national TV again.
