Pushing back against Republican charges that President Obama’s stimulus package has been ineffective, the DNC is launching a three-pronged attack this week focused on projects being funded in the states and districts of the GOP’s congressional leadership.
Democrats are going on the air Thursday with TV and radio spots aimed at three GOP House leaders and two Senate Republican leaders and will hold press conferences or conference calls in their states with individuals testifying to the effectiveness of the stimulus.
In a TV commercial to be aired in Washington and on national cable, the party cites disapproving comments made about the $787 billion legislation by Sen’s Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.) and House members John Boehner (Oh.) and Eric Cantor (Va.)
The goal is to not only detail the benefits the stimulus opponents are seeing in their individual states, but to also lay the blame of the still-sputtering economy on the policies of the Bush administration.
“They supported the Bush policies that sank our economy into recession,” says the narrator in the TV ad. “They broke it - now they refuse to fix it.”
The radio commercials similarly tie the Republican leaders to Bush – citing the former president’s “disastrous economic policies” – while highlighting some of their hometown projects being funded by a measure they opposed.
They are being tailored individually for broadcast in the states and districts of the top GOP lawmakers.
So in the case of Boehner, for example, the narrator cites “vital projects in Ohio.”
“$36 million for 29 road and bridge projects statewide, nearly $2 million for road repairs in Miami County and five and a half million for a bypass project.”
In addition to the top four congressional Republican leaders, House GOP conference chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) is also being targeted on Hoosier radio stations.
The DNC will run the TV and radio ads will run for about a week and is spending “significant five figures” on the buy, according to a party source.
And starting tomorrow with a conference call from Kentucky, local officials and regular people from each of the leaders’ states will speak with reporters this week about how the stimulus is working in their region, citing specific projects and criticizing the GOP leadership.
“We’re going with guns blazing on this,” said DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse. “The recovery act rescued the economy from catastrophe and these Republicans supported an agenda that got our economy in trouble to begin with. They don’t want to admit it and in fact they are lying about it. So we’re going to set the record straight.”
The counter-strike comes after weeks of Republican criticism that what Democrats call the “recovery package” hasn’t stemmed the recession. Obama administration officials and their party allies are especially sensitive to the attacks on the bill from those who Republicans whose states are seeing a significant influx of dollars. Earlier this month, at the direction of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, four cabinet secretaries fired off letters to Jan Brewer, the GOP governor of Arizona, citing Kyl’s critique and asking if the state still wanted the funds.
But with unemployment still rising, and expected to top 10%, Democrats have had to recalibrate their message. Now, Obama loyalists portray the measure as a critical intervention that helped stave off a GOP-created economic crisis while hammering Republicans for criticizing it while their states reap the benefits.
