The heart bleeds:
It seemed like a trivial matter: On Wednesday, House Republicans forced the president to delay his speech to a joint session of Congress by one day. Who cares? The White House cares. Very much. “It is a big deal that the House said ‘no’ to the president from our end,” a White House source with intimate knowledge of what took place between the House and the president told me Thursday. “This confirms what we all know: They will do anything in the House to muck us up.”
Ah, yes. Much like everything else that ails America, this scheduling dust-up is Congress' fault -- more specifically, it's the Republican-held House's fault, natch. It's the House's fault that it hasn't passed every last Obama action item, even though much of his (undoubtedly unaffordable) agenda remains a mystery. It's the House's fault that the president chose not to introduce a jobs plan earlier -- say, any time in the last year or so. It's the House's fault that Obama decided to delay his "big" announcement even further so he could go on vacation. And it's the House's fault that the administration disregarded precedent and protocol by unilaterally announcing the date and time of a joint session address without clearing it with Congressional leaders. Which reminds me of another nugget in the Politico story:
The White House was well aware the president’s speech would conflict with a planned Republican debate sponsored by POLITICO and NBC to be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. The debate would be broadcast live by MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo and live-streamed by POLITICO.
Yet the White House did not see this as an obstacle. “With all due respect, the POLITICO-MSNBC debate was one that was going on a cable station,” the White House source said. “It was not sacrosanct. We knew they would push it back and then there would be a GOP debate totally trashing the president. So it wasn’t all an upside for us.”
Oh, so the timing
wasn't the complete coincidence Jay Carney initially claimed it was, after all, eh? We now know The White House was "well aware" of the GOP's debate plans and simply decided they didn't care. After all, it was just going to be "on
cable." I think we can all agree that's hardly "sacrosanct" -- unlike the political optics of
another non-emergency, non-war-related, non-State of the Union domestic policy speech to Congress from The One. I can only assume Carney's
ludicrous "coincidental" lie is somehow also the House's fault. Why, these wingnut-September-seventh-hostage-takers
made him beclown himself. Incidentally, if you slog through the full article, you'll notice that
Politico's White House source resurrects the
long-dormant "Rush Limbaugh controls the Republican Party!" meme. Perfect.
UPDATE - The White House may be "furious" over getting caught with its pants down after pulling a petty stunt. The American people are probably a little more peeved
over this.
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