Politico follows up on the
plan Jed Lewison highlighted a few weeks ago for House Republicans to spend the August recess telling the country how much they hate Washington. The problem with that messaging strategy was kind of obvious, so
they've made a few tweaks.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans will take a carefully orchestrated, staunchly anti-Washington campaign to voters this month, blaming President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats for Americans' unhappiness with government.
"We have control of only one-half of one-third of the federal government," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, referring to the White House, the judiciary and the Democratic-controlled Senate. The nation's capital, Steel said, "is still very much a Democrat-run town."
Oh, so it's the same as every August recess since 2009: a month devoted to hating on President Obama. Meanwhile, their effort is going to be pretty well-funded by the
usual suspects.
On another front, a coalition of groups including the Tea Party Patriots, ForAmerica, the Club for Growth and Heritage Action is launching a new campaign demanding members of Congress defund the Affordable Care Act.
“This is going to be health-care August again,” said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, one of the groups that helped mobilize the protests four years ago. [...] “The perfect storm that created that high participation and frustration in August of 2009, those conditions are with us today,” Kibbe said. “I think you’re going to see a lot of people showing up—not just tea partyers but disaffected Democrats and young people who aren’t getting what they voted for.”
Republicans really hate
Obama Washington, but they're bringing Washington along with them during recess in the form of Club for Growth and FreedomWorks to bring the in busloads of people that will create the appearance of a mass popular uprising. Same as it ever was.
This time, however, Democrats will be more prepared, and there are plenty of real grassroots organizations. That includes a "coalition of labor, business, faith and Latino organizations is launching huge coast-to-coast campaigns" to push immigration reform, and groups mobilizing their membership in support of Obamacare. That is, if lawmakers bother to have actual open town meetings instead of events orchestrated by lobbying groups.