Shorter Gloria Borger: Enough with the Ronald Reagan comparisons. Except when I make them. The CNN chief political analyst appeared on Monday’s Newsroom to link Joe Biden to Reagan, suggesting the strategy by the liberal Democrat is the same. Talking to Brianna Keilar about the COVID relief bill, she declared, “I think they're making a really big bet here, Brianna. And the big bet here is this COVID relief package is going to be more popular with the country, including Republicans in the country, than it probably will be with Republicans in the Congress.”
Then, Keilar made the Reagan comparison: “So it kind of reminds me in a way of Ronald Reagan who very often went over the heads of members of Congress who didn't support him and went to the American people and tried to shore up support for his plan outside of the Congress if he couldn't get it inside the Congress.”
Yet, in 2007, Borger was sick of invoking the beloved conservative icon. During the Republican presidential primaries, she complained, “First of all, if we're going to get through the next 19 months, let's agree to have a moratorium on invoking the memory of Ronald Reagan.”
But connecting Biden to Reagan? That’s fine.
On Monday, host Keilar suggested that there was just no reasoning with intransigent Republicans:
And, Gloria, obviously when you look at Joe Biden's inauguration speech, it was all about unity. And yet here he is kind of coming up against the cold, hard reality. It's really just an issue of is the White House actually going to admit it at this point in time? I think back to, for instance, the Obama administration when they came into power, and there was this earnest push for there to be bipartisanship when it came to a health care plan. I think it was very much genuine on the side of some Republicans as well. But in the end, that's not really what ended up happening. So it's a wonder of what the lesson and the takeaway is going to be moving forward. Are they really into a bipartisan push?
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A partial transcript is below.
CNN Newsroom
2/1/2021
1:14 pm ET
BRIANNA KEILAR: And, Gloria, obviously when you look at Joe Biden's inauguration speech, it was all about unity. And yet here he is kind of coming up against the cold, hard reality. It's really just an issue of is the White House actually going to admit it at this point in time? I think back to, for instance, the Obama administration when they came into power, and there was this earnest push for there to be bipartisanship when it came to a health care plan. I think it was very much genuine on the side of some Republicans as well. But in the end, that's not really what ended up happening. So it's a wonder of what the lesson and the takeaway is going to be moving forward. Are they really into a bipartisan push?
GLORIA BORGER (CNN Chief political analyst): Well, I think they're making a really big bet here, Brianna. And the big bet here is this COVID relief package is going to be more popular with the country, including Republicans in the country, than it probably will be with Republicans in the Congress. And so she was very careful in talking about sort of unity and bipartisanship, and pointing to the fact that, you know, one poll shows that over 70 percent of people in the country support this package.
So it kind of reminds me in a way of Ronald Reagan who very often went over the heads of members of Congress who didn't support him and went to the American people and tried to shore up support for his plan outside of the Congress if he couldn't get it inside the Congress. So, sure, they're going to push for a budget so they can maybe do this with majority votes. They're going to try to get as many Republicans as they can, of course. But their game, their play here is “the American public has told us they need it. There are lots of Republicans out there in the real world not in Washington who want it, and we're going to be doing this for them.” That's what you're going to be hearing them saying.
1:18 PM ET
BORGER: Look at the stimulus package that passed when Barack Obama became president. It was passed by a handful of votes. And Joe Biden, then-vice president, HAD to twist arms to get a few Republicans on board. I wouldn't be surprised if you had that same kind of situation here, and as Jen Psaki said, “look, the public doesn't care whether this is done by the budget process or whether you can get 60 votes. Her point was they just need the help.
