Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen want you to know
that this puppy wishes Barack Obama wouldn't run
so Mitch McConnell could have his way.
Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen engage in some first-class trolling with a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that Barack Obama should step aside to allow Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee for the presidency. This is actually just a rehash of a piece they wrote a year ago in the Washington Post. Then, they just argued that Obama must announce that he wouldn't run again; now, their big new spin is that Clinton should be his replacement.
The basic premise of both pieces is that divisive partisanship and political gridlock are all Obama's fault. Mitch McConnell says that his priority is to defeat Obama in 2012? Well, he couldn't do that if Obama didn't run in 2012, ergo, the Republican crusade to run the country into a ditch is now, according to Caddell and Schoen, Obama's fault:
By going down the re-election road and into partisan mode, the president has effectively guaranteed that the remainder of his term will be marred by the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity, common purpose, and most of all, our economic strength. If he continues on this course it is certain that the 2012 campaign will exacerbate the divisions in our country and weaken our national identity to such a degree that the scorched-earth campaign that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election will pale in comparison.
Because before 2012 came on the horizon, the Republicans were being meek little puppies whimpering at Obama's feet in their eagerness to work with him even as they were forced to dodge his incessant kicks. This is, it goes without saying, the rankest bullshit imaginable. It distorts the history of what has actually happened since Obama was elected and uses that as the foundation to claim that Obama will be at fault for what they confidently predict will be an unprecedentedly dirty campaign—not just because his presence in the race will cause Republicans to be dirty (his fault) but because "it seems that the White House has concluded that if the president cannot run on his record, he will need to wage the most negative campaign in history to stand any chance." Evidence, please? None, you say? Not even the level of evidence Schoen brought to his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed calling Occupy Wall Street "dangerously out of touch" as he misrepresented the results of his own already-shoddy poll? How odd!
The introduction of Hillary Clinton to their rich fantasy life is almost inconsequential. Yes, Schoen was a pollster for Bill Clinton, a connection he continues to milk in right-wing venues like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial pages. But Schoen and Caddell aren't remotely serious about her running. They're just dragging her into this to have a "new" spin on their attacks on the president. Because otherwise, this is exactly the same piece they wrote a year ago. And will doubtless write a year from now when they argue that it's all well and good that Obama was reelected, but things would go so much more smoothly if he'd just step down lest he be branded a partisan.
