The “Wag the Dog” Government Shutdown

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The Obama administration cannot change the horrid realities that are tubing its polling numbers with its most committed supporters, but it can change the subject by using the federal government shutdown as a political gimmick straight out of the 1997 black comedy “Wag The Dog.”

Like Wag The Dog, the objective is to get the Obama administration out of its current quick sand of bad headlines about any of the following: the Libyan “Kinetic Military Action,” the budget deficit, historically high unemployment, high gasoline prices, Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s Guantanamo trial flip flop, etc.

The Obama administration can count on the Journo-List 2.0 Main Stream Media (MSM) to do its part in presenting the Democratic Party line on these events as the gospel truth, up to and including stating the Obama administration’s acceptance of the GOP terms is a huge victory for President Obama over the evil GOP. Exhibit A — ABC NEWS’s Jake Tapper is already bragging of giving Obama talking points against Congressional Republicans.

The upshot is that there is nothing anyone, especially Congressional Republicans, can do to divert a shut down, or the upcoming “Republicans are Evil” media campaign. The best Congressional Republicans can do is ignore the MSM, attend to their own political interests and work to get their message out on alternate media — Fox, talk radio, Internet bloggers, social media — trusting to the hard economic realities to inform the American voter. After all, this just worked in Wisconsin.

If the Obama administration wants a government shutdown, it can get it, simply by changing the terms of negotiation. If the Republicans cave on spending cuts and social issues, Obama will demand more spending and immigration amnesty. The MSM will report “Republicans are Evil” no matter how the federal government gets shut down. And nothing will have changed, except for the headlines…and the consequences from the decision to close and reopen the federal government.

8 thoughts on “The “Wag the Dog” Government Shutdown”

  2. Why do I care. The Government is shutdown. So what. A week without new federal regulations. The horror.

  4. UN PRESIDENT TIM KALEMKARIAN, US PRESIDENT TIM KALEMKARIAN, US SENATE TIM KALEMKARIAN, US HOUSE TIM KALEMKARIAN: BEST MAJOR CANDIDATE.

  5. The promised veto of the CR that funds the Defense Dept shows how Obama is not acting in good faith. He is the one who got them into another war and now he won’t pay them. He needs hostages.

  6. The Republicans aren’t called the “stupid party” for nothing. In my humble opinion, every time Boehner is asked a question about the budget and government shut down, he should say: ” The budget situation we are facing now is the budget that was due last fall. The Democrats had the votes back then to pass any budget they wanted, why don’t you ask them why they didn’t? Now I’ll answer your question. And by the way, Senator Reid is right. It is about ideology. The Democrats ideology is: more taxes, more spending, and more debt. Ours is less taxes, less spending and reducing the debt.” Trot out this little response to every question asked by a MSM twit and pretty soon it might sink in.

    But then it takes a certain amount of backbone to do this and I think that is in short supply on the Republican side. I hope I’m wrong and I can dream but why doesn’t Boehner and the others under attack point out the obvious? They will have to do it the Democratic propaganda machine–the MSM–sure won’t.

    OK, rant’s over.

  7. Boehner did a pretty good job with the settlement. The Planned Parenthood funding and the EPA funding and the Obamacare defunding will all have to be voted on in the Senate. There are some Democrat Senators who will hate that as they are running for re-election next year. Also, Boehner was not at all triumphalist about the settlement while Reid was lying through his teeth.

    Now, on to the Ryan Budget.

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