Howard Kurtz just posted a new video about conservative’s strange new respect for Bob Woodward, something he finds amusing. The hook is that Woodward’s piece claiming Obama had moved the goalposts on sequester has made even Sean Hannity into a fan:
Kurtz proclaims the entire debate over the origin of sequester “pointless.” Perhaps it would be so long as everyone was proceeding from the understanding that both sides did this together. But that’s not the case. Somehow it escapes the notice of the media that the President is running a full-on campaign on a different premise, i.e. that he’s not at fault for the sequester that is about to smash into the economy like a wrecking ball.
As Woodward pointed out in his piece, the President and his staff started denying parentage of sequester in October and continued doing so until last week. This was not because they couldn’t remember an insignificant detail, it was because they planned to run the very political campaign they are in fact now running. “This policy I proposed will destroy us all!” doesn’t work from a PR standpoint. It’s much better if you can say or at least strongly imply “This policy they proposed…”
So the President and his people lied for partisan advantage (shocking, I know) and now that the truth is out we’re all supposed to agree it’s “pointless.” But the fact that Obama had an equal hand, even a slightly bigger hand, in shaping the policy he now claims is a disaster is not “pointless.” If people understand just how cynical and deceptive the President’s sequester-pocalypse campaign is, it will fail. The President knows it, the White House knows it, the GOP knows it…everyone but Howard Kurtz it seems.
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