A Real (Fire)Bag Job

Oh good, White House spokseman Robert Gibbs has taken some pot shots at the firebaggers.  This is going to turn out well, I can feel it.

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

The White House, constantly under fire from expected enemies on the right, has been frustrated by nightly attacks on cable news shows catering to the left, where Obama and top lieutenants like Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have been excoriated for abandoning the public option in healthcare reform; for not moving faster to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay; and for failing, so far, to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military.

And we're going to get a week or two of Angry Jane Hamsher, Indignant Double G, and morose Big Tent Democrat, followed by efforts to smooth things over, followed by the Village going "Well if Obama has lost the liberal left going into this midterm..." and "Democrats are in complete disarray this election cycle..."

All within the news vacuum of the August recess.  Effing perfect.  The Republicans couldn't have planned this any better themselves.  Perfect timing when the story won't be the Dems hopefully passing the jobs bill they have, but how Robert Gibbs hurt Jane Hamsher's feelings.

There are legitimate criticisms of the President, and I've voiced a hell of a lot of them, but all that's now been turned into a parody of the Wingnut right's Obama Derangement Syndrome

I should take the next week off from here, I swear.  The Village was looking for something to pass the time for the next month and now they have it.  Mission Accomplished, The Hill.