The recent statements by former president Bill Clinton have energized Republicans.
They seem to agree with Clinton in his defense of tax breaks for the super-rich and his coziness with big Wall Street businesses like Bain.
Is this some sort of trap laid by Democrats to expose Republicans as hypocrites and frauds, as well as crony capitalists?
I dunno, but it sure seems to be doing just that.
As a liberal, I'm proud of Obama's stance on the immoral business practices of financial companies like Bain. I'm also proud of his stance against continuing Bush's tax breaks for the super-rich.
Obama is a new breed of Democrat that is at least to some degree distancing himself from the old DLC wing of pro-Wall Street pro-wealth inequality Democrats. And that's a good thing.
Republicans seem to have forgotten that they blamed Bill Clinton for the financial collapse.
Now they're agreeing with him about the same economics he championed then? OK, they can go with that if they want to.
But Clinton is the guy who allowed Republicans to undermine the Wall Street regulations that before 1999 prevented these types of cataclysmic economic earthquakes. People were right to castigate Clinton for his coziness with big business and financial institutions. Even Clinton himself admitted that it was a mistake to do away with those regulations. But he doesn't entirely reject the failed economics that allowed him to be fooled.
Republicans sure hate them some Bill Clinton economics, except when they love everything about it.
Bill Clinton is still admired by many Americans, but not for his positions on financial institutions and Wall Street regulation. They like him for a lot of reasons, but his management of the economy at the end of his term is NOT one of them.
So Republicans can lash themselves to Bill Clinton all they want when it comes to these financial issues.
They undermine their own criticism of Clinton after the economy collapsed in embracing his policies (their policies) now.
Either Clinton is to blame, or Bush is to blame.
They can take their pick but it no longer matters, because now both Clinton and Bush are lashed at the hip to Republicans, while Obama is the only one in this entire picture who's economic vision didn't engineer an economic collapse unlike the world has seen in modern times.
America doesn't want the old DLC Wall Street cronies back in charge any more than they want Bush back in charge. Republicans are boxing themselves in by aligning themselves with these two failed economic visions.
The only daylight Republicans had in any of this was blaming Clinton for the economic collapse that occurred under Bush. That was always an absurd stretch, but it fooled some Americans who wanted to believe it for partisan reasons or who recognized Clinton's role in undermining regulations and allowing Republicans to pass laws that shouldn't have been passed.
But this newly re-energized Republican embrace of the Clintonomics we saw at the end of his term is the final nail in their coffin. They can't blame Clinton and then align themselves with his economics. Granted, they already were, but they can't admit it openly as they've now done.
Now Republicans own the collapse, any which way they turn. And they did it to themselves, with a little help from their old pal Bill.