Go figure

This headline, from The Hill, is one of the more peculiar headlines I've ever seen: "Ryan budget plan poised to pass House, giving GOP needed boost."

"... demonstrating GOP unity," maybe, but giving the party a "needed boost"? Pray tell, what species of interpretive critter is that?

The headline pre-announces, or at least strongly suggests, the electorate's embrace, as Robert Reich notes elsewhere, of giving "the wealthiest Americans an average tax cut of at least $150,000 a year," of sparing defense spending, of doing little to cut the deficit, of gutting Medicare, of slashing the food stamp program and Pell grants and "scores of other programs that now help middle-income and the poor," and of "carv[ing] an additional $19 billion out of next year’s 'discretionary' spending over and above what Democrats agreed to last year."

Now, it may be that the electorate will embrace precisely that, if Reason takes another holiday, as it did in 2010. The virtuosity of Republican pols when it comes to crafting disinformation and befuddlement campaigns is, let's admit it, just downright, paradigmatically awe-inspiring. Since about 1980, immense swaths of the American electorate have possessed little idea of what they're actually voting for, thanks to the Machiavellian scheming of the GOP's Atwater, Luntz & Associates.

But, one never knows. President Obama is one helluva campaigner with a prodigious knack for selling otherwise commonly embraceable American pragmatism, and Democratic pols have on occasion of late evinced some detectable ability to speak plain English, on matters like House budgets that would kill off Medicare. These are, as I have noted repeatedly and perhaps too confidently, encouraging signposts to November's crucible.

All of which throws into real question any headline that marries the "Ryan budget plan" to a "boost."

Comments

[Peter G]

A boost to their collective egos perhaps? You'll recall that the Republicans seemed some what surprised and alarmed by the response to Ryan's Medicare proposals. They'd told everyone that is was the best thing since sliced bread but damned if people didn't insist on reading it anyway and even ventured to disagree. Quite the shock I'll tell you. If at first you don't succeed make minor changes to some of the definitions and try again.