Veronique de Rugy notes over at NRO’s The Corner that Obama is hauling out the tried and true Washington Monument Strategy in order to secure public acceptance of a State bail out. This sort of tactic is used whenever a government is in a really tight financial spot and wants to justify spending or tax increases – “if you don’t give us what we demand, then X popular thing will be closed”. You know – propose a cut to Interior, they threaten to close the Washington Monument.
The stated purpose of Obama’s bail out is to save the jobs of teachers, cops and firefighters. Of course, if we put those jobs on the Federal taxpayer dime then it will free up State taxpayer money to save the job of the Deputy Assistant Director of Transgendered Affairs – but that won’t be mentioned. It’ll all be “save the teachers!”, and if you don’t agree then you hate teachers and children.
I suspect Obama will get it through – wouldn’t matter if polls showed 60% opposed. You see, those government employees to be bailed out are substantially Democrat in voting pattern but, even more important, their union dues are vital to Democrat campaign activities. And the really wonderful thing, for Democrats, is that they even get to use the union dues of Republican employees (yes, I know; that is illegal – but when has that ever troubled a Democrat?). Democrats in Congress will simply not allow such a lush source of funds to be killed – nor will they want unemployment spiking to 12% or more by November as government employees are let go.
But I also think this will be the very last time we’ll see this tactic used. You see, I think that the people see through the scam. More and more people are coming to realize that as valuable as cops, firefighters and teachers are, they aren’t entirely indispensable and, furthermore, at a time when all of us are hurting, it stands to reason that the government employees have to hurt, too. The old tax and spend song and dance just doesn’t play as well.
So, Democrats will do it, but it will fall on deaf ears – the pleas to save the teachers will be seen for a justification of waste. And, in the end, I think that this tactic will be piled on all the other corrupt shennanigans and will be instrumental in a quite stunning result in November.
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