Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a few of his fellow Democrats had a conference call lined up with reporters to talk about the budget. Before the conference began, Schumer thought it would be a good idea to coach his colleagues on how to portray Republicans and Speaker of the House John Boehner. “I always use the word extreme,” he said, unaware that reporters were already on the line and listening in. According to the New York Times, they shut up when someone realized their comments weren’t private, but that didn’t stop them from mindlessly parroting the talking points.
After thanking his colleagues — Barbara Boxer of California, Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — for doing the budget bidding for the Senate Democrats, who are facing off against the House Republicans over how to cut spending for the rest of the fiscal year, Mr. Schumer told them to portray John A. Boehner of Ohio, the speaker of the House, as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme. “I always use the word extreme,” Mr. Schumer said. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”
A minute or two into the talking-points tutorial, though, someone apparently figured out that reporters were listening, and silence fell.
Then the conference call began in earnest, with the Democrats right on message.
“We are urging Mr. Boehner to abandon the extreme right wing,” said Ms. Boxer, urging the House to compromise on the scale of spending cuts and to drop proposed amendments that would deny federal financing for Planned Parenthood and for government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency.
Mr. Carper continued with the theme, referring to some House Republicans’ “right-wing extremist friends.”…
The Washington Examiner provides more of Schumer’s commentary, before he realized they weren’t alone.
“The main thrust is basically that we want to negotiate and we want to come up with a compromise but the Tea Party is pulling Boehner too far over to the right and so far over that there is no more fruitful negotiations,” Schumer said on the call. “The only way we can avoid a shutdown is for Boehner to come up with a reasonable compromise and not just listen to what the Tea Party wants. “
The Republicans ought to be pushing the talking point that what’s extreme is spending us into oblivion, with no plan to reduce the deficit or the national debt. So was failing to pass a budget, and then threating to shut down the government.
Via memeorandum
The Camp of the Saints linked – thanks!
Senator Charles Schumer: God of War
With apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley, author of Ozymandias
I met a well-known pundit in D.C.
Who said: Within the Senate leadership
There is against us and our liberty,
One man who carries in his iron grip
The life and death of legislative acts
And temper to destroy, instead of lose,
All those whose voice and vote he feels he lacks
Or those who would his dark demands refuse.
And on his ornate Senate office door
In Latin script of longhand does appear:
“My name is Charles Schumer, God of War:
My bidding do, or I your name will smear.”
And so has he defamed the GOP
With calumny discharged both night and day,
As those uncompromising and extreme:
For they would budget what we can repay.
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[...] As you probably have heard, Chucky ’The Slime’ Schumer was caught by reporters speaking to what he though were just some of his fellow Social Democrats before a scheduled teleconference. In his remarks, Chucky revealed some of his Party’s strategy for demonizing and delegitimizing the GOP and the Right. The Lonely Conservative has the details here. [...]
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