Never let a crisis go to waste….
During his press conference today, called to announce his new gun control task force, President Obama invoked the Newtown massacre to apply pressure on congressional Republicans in the fiscal cliff standoff.
OBAMA: If this past week has done anything it should give us some perspective. I-I-I-If there’s one thing we should have, after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what’s important. And I would like to think that members of that caucus would say to themselves “You know what, I disagree with the president on some things. We wish the other guy had won. We’re gonna fight him on a whole range of issues over the next four years. We think his philosophy is all screwed up. But right now, what the country needs is for us to compromise, get a deficit reduction deal in place, make sure middle class taxes don’t go up, make sure that we’re laying the foundations for growth, give certainty to businesses large and small, not put ourselves through some sort of self-inflicted crisis every six months, allow ourselves time to focus on things like preventing the tragedy in Newtown from happening again, focus on issues like energy and immigration reform, all the things that will make a determination as to whether our country grows over the next four years, ten years, 20 years, and if we could just pull back from the immediate political battles, if ya peel off the partisan war paint, then we should be able to get something done.”
I think, I think the Speaker would like to get that done. But an environment needs to be created not just among House Republicans but among Senate Republicans that says the campaign is over and let’s see if we can do what’s right for the country, at least for the next month! And then, we can re-engage in all the other battles that they’ll wanna fight.
This has to be one of the lowest moments of a very low presidency. Why should the Newtown killings bring any sort of “perspective” to a spending crisis that Barack Obama has created?
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