On Meet The Press yesterday, Robert Gibbs became the latest in a string of Obama administration officials to remind voters that Republicans could retake control of Congress in this November's elections.
Gibbs said President Obama and Democratic candidates would make the possibility of GOP victory an issue on the campaign trail, using the examples of Joe "I apologize to BP" Barton and John "The financial crisis was an ant" Boehner to show how Republicans would govern.
Here's video:
Transcript:
MR. GREGORY: Two final points. First of all, I want to get a prediction from you on, back on the political debate. Is the House in jeopardy, the majority for the Democrats in the House, in jeopardy?
MR. GIBBS: I think there's no doubt that there are a lot of seats that will be up, a lot of contested seats. I think people are going to have a choice to make in the fall. But I think there's no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control. There's no doubt about that. This will depend on strong campaigns by Democrats. And again, I think we've got to take the issues to them. You know, are -- do you want to put in, in to the speakership of the House a guy who thinks that the, the financial calamity is, is tantamount to an ant? The guy who's the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Joe Barton, started his congressional testimony of the CEO of BP by apologizing, not to the people in the gulf, but to the CEO. I think that's a perfect window, not into what people are thinking, but the way they would govern. Joe Barton, John Boehner, those are the type of things you'll hear a lot, I think, from both the president and local candidates about what you'd get if the Republicans were to gain control.
Republicans are getting as cocky about the November elections as Jim "Waterloo" DeMint was about health care reform, but for all their confidence, they still face one monumental hurdle: their own track record.
If they win this fall, Republicans will be back in the majority two short years after George Bush left office. The fact that Democrats -- Robert Gibbs being the latest example -- are more eager than Republicans to talk about that possibility reveals the GOP's Achilles heel: they are responsible for the policies that tanked our economy and if they are put back in power, there's no reason to believe they'd do anything differently than they did the last time around.
Democrats, meanwhile, stabilized the economy with an economic recovery plan, enacted universal health care legislation, and are on the verge of passing Wall Street reform with clean energy and immigration on the immediate horizon. There's no question that we haven't yet recovered from the Bush-Republican era, but we are recovering. To the extent things have moved too slowly, it's largely been thanks to obstructionist conservatives and misguided efforts to negotiate with them, but Democrats do have a record they can run on.
To the extent that November's election is national, voters will decide whether they want Democrats to continue governing or if they want to put Republicans back in control of Congress. I wouldn't bet on them choosing the latter, and by reminding people that it's a very real possibility, neither is Robert Gibbs.