While Nancy Pelosi has been working on her amiable friendship with George Bush, and Harry Reid has been making sure that a Senator endorsing, supporting and prone to introducing John McCain at his campaign stops keeps his Democratic Committee assignments, the Republicans have been fine-tuning one of their strategies for this fall.
Democrats control Congress, blame them for our problems.
This leaves the Democrats in just about the perfect position, perma-whining, with a strategy based on "everything I need to know about politics I learned in kindergarten." Roughly speaking, "I am rubber you are glue everything you say bounces off of me and sticks on you" has never proven to be an extremely effective communication system but give Chuck Schumer two thumbs up for the effort, nice hustle Chuck.
After the President said:
Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Bush said his administration has made a series of proposals to shield the American people from the worst effects of the economic turndown and to address long-term energy needs. But, he said Congress has refused to act on the proposals from extending tax cuts to expanding America's oil refinery capacity.
Chuck fired back:
"The president and the White House have repeatedly ignored repeated shots across the bow of our economy: rising foreclosures, falling home prices, withering consumer confidence, and record oil company profits," Schumer said. "None of them are being addressed."
Stalemate.
But while Democrats refuse to acknowledge, act or even pretend that they are the majority on Capitol Hill, warming the hearts of millions of Party members like myself who worked our asses off in 2006 to make them the majority party, Republicans remember what it was like to be the majority up there and one simple fact:
The leadership on the Hill sets the legislative agenda and brings the bills to the floor that it wants.
Somewhere in Speaker Pelosi's office, a light bulb went off, a dull, small bulb but somewhere.
So, for example, a slim majority of the American people opposed the war like in this article from this morning:
The poll also indicates that support for the war in Iraq has never been lower. Thirty percent of those questioned favored the war while 68 percent opposed the conflict.
Speaker Pelosi could choose not to bring the $170 billion supplement to the supplement to the supplement and decide, let's spend the money on our veterans and troops who are here at home and need help, remember Walter Reed?
See how this works?
Or with gas prices rising out of control -- she could send a bill to the floor releasing oil from the strategic reserves and force Bush, if he wants, to veto it. Then she could send it again and again again, and Bush vetoes it, again and again and again. That way, someday, people get that he's at fault.
Instead, here's what I got from a Republican C4.
In a 2006 press release, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed that Democrats had a common sense plan to bring down skyrocketing fuel prices. The average price for a gallon of gas when Democrats took control of congress that November was $2.25 - a price that Pelosi and other liberals claimed amounted to "price gouging". The average price of a gallon of gas today is now up to a record $3.61, and in Speaker Pelosi's home Congressional district in the California bay area, the price tops $4 a gallon.
Despite the price going up $1.36 per gallon (that's 60%!) since Democrats took control of Congress 15 months ago, an out-of-touch Speaker Pelosi and Congressional leadership have still not released this so-called common sense plan to bring prices under control. Just last week in an interview with Larry King, Speaker Pelosi cited the national average as being only $2.56.
Rising fuel prices don't only raise the cost to fill our gas tanks, but they affect the prices we pay for almost every other product - including necessities like food, and Congress is doing nothing to alleviate the strain on Americans' wallets. Click here to see just how out of touch Speaker Pelosi and Congressional leaders are. Then call Speaker Pelosi's office at 202-225-0100 and remind her that America does need a common sense plan to bring gas prices under control.
See how this game works?
It's the new game in town and we have already proven one thing: we know how to lose it.