Early Warning

Although it's patently obvious in both the talking points themselves and the fact they are straight from the RNC, if you want to know what the GOP Village talking points on Obama are going to be, check Politico.com on a Sunday.

White House reporters for The New York Times predict that the market collapse will force President-elect Barack Obama to abandon for now many of his campaign promises.

If his stimulus plan "doesn’t work out, he may very well be a one-term president,” said Jeff Zeleny, who covered Obama’s campaign. “It’s hard to imagine that he could be reelected if the economy’s in the exact same position four years from now.”

“A lot of the things he said on the campaign trail you can now dispense with,” said correspondent Peter Baker. “For the moment he has to focus on the economy.”

The reporters, gathered at a Sunday afternoon panel at the New York Times Center in New York City, largely concurred with the assessment that turning around the economy now trumps the issues Obama focused on from the stump until the market meltdown in August.

Baker suggested Obama would tackle smaller-scale issues related to his major agenda items as a kind of political “down payment” on his promises, for now would retreat from even some of his firmest pledges.

“You’re not going to see universal health care, I don’t think, this year,” Baker said. “You’re not going to see a cap on carbon emissions, as he has promised, probably, this year.”

And for all of his campaign trail talk about collective sacrifice, Baker observed, Obama has seemed reluctant to call for austerity in a challenging economic moment.

“He hasn’t asked anybody for sacrifice,” Baker said. “His whole economic package is about giving things to people.”

So yeah, the insufferably liberal NY Times has not only decided Obama now owns the economy, but the Village has already declared Obama a one-termer before he has even been sworn into office. Think about that. Politico is certainly trying to become the one-stop shop for Village Idiocy in the 21st century, and it is well on its way of being the fastest way to metagame GOP talking points into a nice, portable lump of crap. It's a convenient way for wingnuts, Village Idiots, and "sensible pundit types" to sit around and share their collective disdain for all things progressive. Clucking their tongues, wondering where he went wrong, resigning him to Jimmy Carter status, already doing the post-mortem on his term...and he's not even President yet. Gotta love our "liberal media".

As Mel Brooks said in Robots, "See a need, fill a need." Unfortunately the problem is in Washington there's a need for all the preening Village centrists to hear themselves speak ad nauseum.