Setting The Sequester Narrative: Blame the Tea Party

An interesting thing is happening in Washington DC. The White House is trying to assign blame to Republicans in Congress for the impending “draconian cuts” to the federal budget known as the “Sequester.” Speaker of the House John Boehner, who never seems to miss the opportunity to screw up a message, took to standing in front of a “doomsday” style clock in an effort to “blame” the White House for the cuts.  

The problem with the Boehner optics:  It buys into the Obama narrative that the sequester is Armageddon.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post today lets Boehner off the hook by throwing the blame over to the Beltway’s favorite scape goat, the Tea Party.  But, the twist in this story is conservatives who were swept into Congress in 2010 during the grassroots Tea Party election seem just fine with this narrative… in fact, they want credit, not blame for the cuts.  

“This will be the first significant Tea Party victory in that we got what we set out to do in changing Washington,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas. Meanwhile, Speaker Boehner is still standing in front of the doomsday clock and giving President Obama the photo-op of a lifetime.  

The Washington Post writes as though they have one reader, John Boehner himself.  The article is designed to terrify the Speaker into capitulating to the White House:  

The sequester, which will begin slowly but build over time, has put Republican leaders in a difficult corner. They say they oppose the cuts to defense spending and see little wisdom in indiscriminate, across-the-board reductions elsewhere…

Some Republicans say the desire by GOP lawmakers to celebrate deep spending cuts while warning of their potentially negative consequences is risky.

Don’t you love hearing convenient quotes like that from “some Republicans?”  

Rest assured, when flights are grounded and children are starving because the Obama White House wants to inflict as much human pain as possible on the most modest of cuts ever to hit Washington DC, it will be the wild-eyed, “limbic brain” Tea Party types who are to blame.  And if it’s convenient, Speaker Boehner will provide the Washington Post with just the right quote to make the case.