After discussing some of the Republican's problems with the RNC and their recent financial disclosures, the panel on this week talks about the problems for incumbents in both parties and what that might mean at the ballot box come the mid-term elections. Despite admitting that the Republicans have a huge problem with their ever dwindling base and that they don't have any actual strategy, Matt Dowd touts how many seats they're going to pick up because people are angry right now and the Democrats "own the levers of power". He neglects to mention that they haven't had their hands on that lever for very long and as Robert Reich points out they're not offering any alternatives except for negativity. George Will disagrees.
TAPPER: ... you're shaking your head that the Republican Party -- you don't buy that they are perceived as negative about everything?
WILL: I would set up Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin's roadmap for tax reform, job growth, and entitlement reform...
TAPPER: You embrace that more than John Boehner does, though...
WILL: Well, that -- that could well be. I'm right, and he's wrong. But...
(CROSSTALK)
WILL: ... against all the so-called ideas, these recycled Great Society, New Deal ideas, of which my friend, Bob, is so enamored
Yeah, that's the winning ticket George. Follow Paul Ryan's plan and turn Social Security over to Wall Street and more tax cuts for the rich. I guess George Will doesn't remember how well that Social Security tour worked out for George Bush a few years back. By all means, please encourage all of the Republicans to go out there and take that same message back to the people but they need to quit lying about what they want to do and dressing it up with phony names. It's not "entitlement reform". It's Social Security privatization. I'd love to see the GOP take George Will and Paul Ryan's advice.
Full transcript below the fold via ABC News.
REICH: Well, you know, there's obviously a kind of an off- message problem here for the Republicans. And, Matt, when you talk about hypocrisy, yes, but hypocrisy is not exactly something new in this town. I think there's -- there's a larger issue...
DOWD: Which is why this town's ratings are so bad.
REICH: But there's -- I wanted to get to that, because I think that voters -- and it's not just Tea Parties -- voters all over this country right now are saying, as they've said before -- but I think with a greater sense of commitment and intent right now -- they're saying, the establishment politicians just don't get it. They don't know where we are. They don't understand what we're suffering with regard to unemployment or the economy. They don't understand fiscal responsibility. They don't -- they don't get any of the -- anything that we are talking about in our families and among our friends.
And this is bad. It's bad for Democrats. It's also bad for Republicans.
DOWD: Well, I agree. I think the -- I mean, the big...
REICH: Incumbents. It's bad for incumbents.
DOWD: The big problem today is a total lack of public trust the public has of trust in Washington, whether it's Democrat or Republican. This is not a partisan problem, is when you have corrupt scandals with Charlie Rangel and all of that, just who have come up -- Republican scandals and new Republican scandals, is which is why the Congress as a whole is rated at the lowest point it's ever been rated. President Obama's numbers are dropping. There is a lack of total trust in the institution of politics in Washington.
REICH: And Washington is just totally out of -- out of -- out of keeping with America.
FINNEY: Of course it is. But there is a deeper problem that the RNC has. Let's be honest. Any time when you have the first African- American president and the first African-American chairman of the party of a party with a very dwindling base, you may be able to win race by race with the Tea Parties, but you cannot win a national election if you can't bring in a broader coalition of voters.
Privately, people have admitted that -- and, you know, this is not the first time Michael Steele has been an embarrassment or has misappropriated funds or not done what he's supposed to be doing. Privately, people have admitted that part of the reason, in addition to the technical aspects of two-thirds vote to vote him out, he's an African-American, and you have to be very careful about, what signal does that send, if you were to remove an African-American, again, at a time when the base of your party is dwindling?
That is a longer-term problem than simply going to a strip club or spending money on jets.
DOWD: I'm not going to argue against the liabilities that the Republicans have and their lack of a real strategy and their lack of a real program. The interesting thing...
FINNEY: Or message.
DOWD: The interesting thing to me, granted all those things? They're going to pick up 25-plus seats in the House this year. They're going to probably pick up five or six or seven seats in the U.S. Senate. They're going to pick up governors races.
As of right now, Barack Obama could not get re-elected, if the election was held today, based on his approval ratings and based on history. And so Republicans have all those problems? Democrats have a bigger set of problems, because they own the levers -- they own the levers of power in a town in a time when people are fed up with it.
REICH: I don't -- I don't think that's -- that's right. If -- if the Republicans have an alternative, whether it be health care or the economy, and Americans really understood that there was an alternative, and the Republicans were articulate about advancing that alternative, maybe you would be right, but there -- we've -- I don't remember a Republican Party that was just as consistently negative about everything.
The public knows that there are deep problems that have to be faced, and the Republicans are...
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: ... you're shaking your head that the Republican Party -- you don't buy that they are perceived as negative about everything?
WILL: I would set up Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin's roadmap for tax reform, job growth, and entitlement reform...
TAPPER: You embrace that more than John Boehner does, though...
WILL: Well, that -- that could well be. I'm right, and he's wrong. But...
(CROSSTALK)
WILL: ... against all the so-called ideas, these recycled Great Society, New Deal ideas, of which my friend, Bob, is so enamored.
