Is Debbie Wasserman Schultz DNC Chair–Or Isn't She?

Debbie Wasserman Schultz wants it both ways. On attack, she is the chair of the Democratic National Committee, and speaks for the party as a whole. But on defense, she is just a lowly member of the House of Representatives, unable to speak about the anything beyond her limited competence as one of 435 members of the lower chamber.

Last night, Wasserman Schultz appeared on Fox News to comment on the Republican primary elections. In keeping with Democrats’ strategy of making the 2012 contest less a referendum on President Barack Obama and more a comparison between Obama and an allegedly less “likable” Mitt Romney, Wasserman Schultz attacked Romney for supporting the budget of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and claimed that President Obama’s budget showed a clear contrast between the priorities of the two parties’ contenders.

Host Bret Baier then challenged Wasserman Schultz to explain why the Senate had not passed President Obama’s budget–or any other. (He could also have mentioned that the house had voted down the White House proposal in a unanimous, bipartisan vote–just as the Senate had rejected the president’s 2011 budget in similar fashion.) 

At that, Wasserman Schultz refused to answer, saying she did not speak for the Senate. However, Baier pointed out, Wasserman Schultz had already spoken for the Senate–in an earlier interview on Fox in which she had predicted Majority Leader Harry Reid would pass a budget. (Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Kent Conrad (D-SD) did make some attempt to move a budget forward, but was shot down by Reid, who is more afraid of the political consequences of a bad budget than of breaking the law.)

Wasserman Schultz responded by walking back her comments, retreating again into the defense that she cannot speak for Senate Democrats. If that is, in fact, true, then the Democratic Party is treating Wasserman Schultz differently than it has treated all her male predecessors by failing to trust her with the authority to represent the whole party. (“War on women,” anyone?) 

More likely, it is a lie–and Wasserman Schultz knows it.

Here’s the truth. President Obama’s budgets are fantasies about what Congress could spend if money were no object. They are not an attempt to square the country’s needs and obligations with its resources. They represent a choice for voters only in the sense that fantasy is an alternative to reality. 

Like Obama himself, who is more myth than man, Democrat policies are fairy tales Americans are learning to see through–and beyond.