Say goodbye to hope and change. It's time to embrace the politics of doom and gloom.
MSNBC host Contessa Brewer, in an interview that seemed a lot like a lobbying campaign for the stimulus set for a vote in the U.S. Senate, quizzed Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., about the possibility that his vote against a stimulus bill could send the country spiraling into a Depression - and endanger the public's footwear.
"But if it fails, if it fails and our economy implodes and we see ourselves stuffing cardboard back in our shoes like they did in the Depression era, are you willing to put your name behind that?" Brewer asked.
"I'm willing to stay here and continue through the weekend, next week, the next week, to try to solve something and get it right - don't rush into something like this country rushed into the bailout program right before the holidays last year," Barrasso replied. "I think that was rushed. We found out that that didn't accomplish the goal."
"You're looking at spending a huge amount of money," Barrasso continued. "This is the largest spending bill, Contessa, in the history of our country. And to rush into it and get it done in three days is not what the American people expect from their elected members of the Senate."
Throughout the interview, Brewer fired off a barrage of questions, implying that it was difficult to understand how anyone could oppose the bailout. She cited liberal bomb thrower and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman's Feb. 6 op-ed in The New York Times as a reason for immediate and swift action on the nearly $1 trillion stimulus.
"President Obama last night, Senator, sounded the alarm," Brewer said. "He said this thing has got to get passed, that the squabbling has got to end and he's not the only one. Today, economist Paul Krugman has an op-ed in The New York Times. At the end of it, he says quote, ‘The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over the edge.' Are you worried that you're walking on thin ice by opposing this stimulus bill?"
Brewer fired off another doozy after that, demanding that Barrasso have a solution to unemployment and home foreclosures, as if voting on the stimulus would do that, even though as she put it - the stimulus bill is maybe "not spending on the things that you personally would like to see them spent on."
"But there are these economists here, Senator, who say the problem with the bill is that it's not big enough," Brewer said. "It doesn't spend enough. And maybe it's not spending on the things that you personally would like to see them spent on, but the fact of the matter is - with now the jobs numbers, 600,000 people out of work in just last month alone, more than 3 million people since this recession started - what are you proposing to get people back to work and safe in the security that their homes will be there next week?"
The fear tactic has become commonplace for Democrats and their media allies since Obama was inaugurated, as columnist Charles Krauthammer pointed out in his Feb. 6 Washington Post editorial:
"‘A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.'"
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.
Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill."
