Ordinarily, when Republicans try to rewrite history, they tend to point to events that happened quite a while ago, which makes it easier to play on short memories. Rewriting the events of two weeks ago seems more brazen.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is kicking off his presidential campaign with a bit of creative spin on S&P’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating: turns out President Obama did it.
In his first and bio-heavy campaign video of his presidential campaign, Perry places the blame for the downgrade squarely on the shoulders of Obama.
As the buffoonish governor sees it, “the president’s refusal to control spending” led to the downgrade.
Perry may believe this, but if he does, it reinforces fears he wasn’t burdened with an overabundance of intelligence.
There’s an important debate as to whether S&P made the right call, but if we put that aside for now, there’s no great mystery as to how and why S&P arrived at its conclusion. The agency hasn’t exactly kept the reasoning secret: congressional Republican expressed skepticism about the serious consequences of a credit default; they undermined confidence in the American political system; refused to compromise; they ruled out additional revenue; and they deliberately played a radical game with the full faith and credit of the United States. S&P didn’t leave much doubt about which side of the aisle the agency considers responsible.
This isn’t ancient history. This just happened and should still be fresh in everyone’s memory.
Perry’s attack, by the way, comes the same day as the governor downplayed the threat of default. The irony is astounding: S&P downgrades our debt because far-right Republicans didn’t take default seriously; Perry announces he agrees with those far-right Republicans; Perry then holds Obama responsible for the S&P decision.
I’ve seen plenty of reports the past couple of days insisting Democrats would be foolish to underestimate Perry as a candidate. As far as electoral consideration are concerned, there’s probably some truth to that. But it’s also true that anyone who thinks this clown knows what he’s talking about is also making a mistake.
