March 7-9, 2009: Republican Strategist: Goal is to ‘Bring down’ Democrats’ ‘Approval Numbers’

Republican House member Patrick McHenry (R-NC) admits that his party’s resistance to Democratic initiatives are designed to bring down the approval numbers for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the Congressional Democratic leadership. Speaking of Republican resistance to the Democrats’ recent budget proposal and other economic initiatives from the Obama administration and House Democrats, McHenry says: “We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010. Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.” McHenry belongs to a group of Congressional Republicans helping to shape the party’s message in opposition to Obama and Congressional Democrats. Washington Post pundit Greg Sargent writes, “It’s likely that Dems will grab on to [McHenry’s] quote today to bolster their charge that Congressional Republicans aren’t interested in playing a constructive role in governing and see their hope for political revival in the eventual failure of the Democratic majority’s policies.” The article also cites a recent statement by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who told a group of reporters that House Republicans would not bother crafting bills to provide alternatives to Democratic economic legislation: “I have been trying to get my Republican colleagues to understand that we are not in the legislative business. We will spend more time communicating [with the American people], because that is what we can do.” [National Journal, 3/7/2009; Plum Line, 3/9/2009]
Minority Leader: Comments 'Largely Correct, but Incomplete' - Through a spokesman, Boehner says of McHenry’s statement: “I think that’s largely correct, but incomplete. Obviously, as Leader Boehner has said repeatedly, we stand ready to work with the Speaker and the president when it is in the best interest of the American people. When we cannot work together, Republicans will offer better solutions—rooted in our principles—to the problems facing our country. If House Democrats push for the same tired liberal agenda of higher taxes to pay for more ineffective government spending, I imagine that their standing in the polls will suffer, but our first priority is doing the right thing for the American people, and we hope it is theirs as well.” Sargent notes: “My parsing of this is that Boehner believes that McHenry’s description of the party’s strategic goal as winning the message war and dragging down Dem poll numbers is ‘largely correct,’ but that McHenry left out the GOP’s willingness on principle to work with Dems and that the GOP’s ‘first priority is doing the right thing for the American people.’ That would appear to stop short of disagreeing with or criticizing McHenry.” [Plum Line, 3/10/2009]
McHenry's Previous Utterances - In April 2008, McHenry was reprimanded by the Pentagon for breaching operational security and and giving terrorists potentially useful information (see April 4-7, 2008). In February 2009, McHenry joined in falsely accusing the Obama administration of funding a “levitating train from Disneyland to Las Vegas” (see February 13, 2009 and After).