Demea wrote:
It's campaigning disguised as governing, but it's crafty because it forces the House GOP (and the GOP nominees) to come out strongly against it. Then, during the presidential debates, Obama can put on his most exasperated look and say "I tried to reduce the deficit, but the 'Party of No' wouldn't let me because they love billionaires and private jet owners!"
This only works if the people who are the reason the GOP handily won the whole "no new taxes" debate forget the more important issue. Obviously, it's going to come down to perception changes between now and then, but it's entirely possible that he'll have so worn out that line by then that all it'll get is groaning and "OMG, he's not really trying that line again!?" responses from the public.
It's a pretty transparent line. And frankly, the GOP can play the same game, only with a stronger hand. They can point to numerous plans they have put forth (and presumably will continue to put forth over the next year), then point to the Dem controlled senate refusing to vote on them, and Obama insisting on vetoing them, and say that they were the ones with the plans to fix the economy, without needing to raise taxes, but the Dems were the party of "No", and Obama was the president of "No".
No one's going to fail to grasp that both sides have very different ideas about how to deal with our current economy and both sides will insist that "their plan" is the right way to go. If your whole campaign rests on just saying that over and over, it's not going to work very well. At some point, people are going to have to choose which plan they think is better. And given that the Dems so far haven't really put anything forth that isn't just a rehash of what didn't work in 2009/2010, they're going to have a hard time claiming that this time their plan would work, while the GOP's wouldn't.
It's just a double hardship on the economy that I don't think they can overcome.