Isn't it amazing that somehow these Sunday show hosts all managed to come to the same conclusion that President Obama can no longer be trusted and that his presidency is now in peril due to the problems with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act? It's almost like they were all reading off of the same script.
Nicole already discussed the Martha Raddatz segment on This Week, where the audience was treated to a big heaping helping of the latest Republican talking points of the day. CNN's Candy Crowley took it one step further and threw in some of Eric Cantor's rhetoric on why it's supposedly impossible for the House to pass immigration reform. If you missed it over the weekend, go read this post from Think Progress: Cantor: We Can’t Pass Immigration Reform Because Healthcare.gov Is Having Technical Difficulties.
Then tell me who Crowley is carrying water for during the beginning of her show this Sunday:
CANDY CROWLEY: Good morning from Washington. I'm Candy Crowley. Mama said there'd be days like this, but who knew there'd be months.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If we can just get the darn website working and smooth this thing out --
CROWLEY (voice-over): A politician on a rugged road is generally headed downhill and losing friends along the way. Amid the mess of a broken website and millions of Americans losing health insurance they thought they could keep, the president's approval numbers are sliding. In a totally related development --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On this vote, the yeas are 261, the nays are 157. The bill is passed.
CROWLEY: Thirty-nine Democrats voted against the president and with Republicans on an Obamacare fix. The bill goes nowhere from here, but it's the thought that counts and the thought is that the president's broken keep your health care promise is toxic. Hence, the direct message to voters.
OBAMA: I want them to know that, you know, their senator or congressman, they were making representations based on what I told them and what this White House and our administrative staff told them. And so, it's not on them, it's on us.
CROWLEY: Of the president's numbers collapsing beneath the roll out, this one weighs heaviest. Is Barack Obama honest and trustworthy? Just 44 percent of Americans think so, down 10 points since late September. It has prompted comparisons to George Bush's failed response to the deadly hurricane Katrina.
The situations are entirely different but politically trusted Bush and in the government fell and never recovered, undermining the rest of Bush's term. Without argument, this president is at the lowest political moment of his tenure and it is difficult to govern without trust.
OBAMA: I think it's legitimate for them to expect me to have to win back some credibility on this health care law in particular and on a whole range of these issues in general.
CROWLEY: Time is short. As some allies inch away, Republicans are circling.
REP. FRED UPTON, (R) MICHIGAN: Presidencies are often associated with one famous utterance. Ask not what your country can do for you. The only thing we have to fear, tear down this wall. And our current president will be no different. If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Period.
CROWLEY: Poll numbers are snapshots in time and time moves on. For the president, days like this could become months or they could become different kinds of days entirely.
(END VIDEOTAPE) CROWLEY (on-camera): Joining me now, members of their party leadership, Democratic congressman, James Clyburn and Republican senator, John Barrasso. Gentlemen, thank you both for coming this morning.
I want to pick up first on the Katrina references with generally go to the idea that once a president falls below that 50 percent line when it comes to honesty and trustworthiness it makes it very hard to govern, but that really litigating George Bush and Katrina, Senator Barrasso. Do you buy into that argument that the president may be in a hole he can't get out of?
BARRASSO: He maybe, Candy. I'm a lot less concerned about the president and his legacy than I am about the lives of the people in my state in Wyoming and around the country who are being hurt by the policy of this health care law. They're losing their coverage, millions. They're being hit by sticker shock.
They can't keep their doctors. And what the president is proposing is basically a false fix. It's a political band aid, but it's not a permanent cure for the people that are being hurt by his policies so it's time to start over with trying to get people the health care that they wanted from the beginning which was affordable care from their doctor that they choose.
CROWLEY: Congressman Clyburn, it remains true, however, that a president who loses kind of the faith of Americans finds it hard to pass other things, immigration, all the other things that are on. It was a very ambitious second term agenda for this president. How does he win back trust? I'm assuming you think he can.
Note to Candy Crowley. The reason President Obama can't get anything passed through the House, such as immigration reform has nothing to do with whether anyone "trusts him" or not. It's because Republicans have been obstructing everything he's tried to get passed since the day he got elected. Pretending they have an excuse now won't change that fact.
