Former NRCC chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma caused quite a stir among conservatives a couple of years ago by claiming earmarks and skyrocketing spending weren’t why the GOP lost the Senate and House in 2006.
“Oh, I don’t think the problem was spending,” Cole told The Washington Post. “People who argue that we lost because we weren’t true to our base, that’s just wrong.”
Cole’s prescription soon after taking over the NRCC for GOP success in 2008, according to the Post, was familiar one: “He wants the GOP to woo swing voters, and he believes they can be coaxed back into the fold with better messaging, better marketing and better performance.”
But then came Obama.
At the time of Cole’s remarks, I thought my former Moore (OK) High School classmate (He was class of 67, I was class of 68) had temporarily lost his mind. Cole may be the smartest Republican political operative the Sooner state has ever produced. I should also tell you that his mother, Helen Cole, was something of a mentor to me during my earliest years of political interest.
Now, it’s nearly three years later, Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have passed multiple bailouts, the failed economic stimulus program, and Obamacare, driving the deficit to a record-shattering $1.6 trillion this year and the national debt beyond $13 trillion, both levels undreamed of just a few years ago.
And yet when pollster Scott Rasmussen asked voters recently who was most responsible for the federal deficit, 49 percent said President George W. Bush and the Republicans, 43 percent opted for Obama and the Democrats. And 56 percent say Bush and the GOP increased federal spending too much.
Could it be that voters expect Democrats to spend like crazy, and Republicans to be more responsible, with a result that when the latter act like the former, it makes a deeper impression that is difficult to erase?
If that is true, it helps explain much of the intensity behind the Tea Party movement.
