According to this, President Obama told 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft that poor communications and bad persuasion is what led to the Republican/tea party election results last Tuesday.
So, we can safely conclude that THE election message was not received.
In case Obama is considering other explanations for the results, John Boehner does an excellent job of summing up the message in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. Key messages:
They [voters] look at Washington and see an arrogance of power. They see a Congress that doesn’t listen, that is ruled by leaders who seem out of touch and dismissive, even disdainful, of the anger that Americans feel toward their government and the challenges they face in an economy struggling to create jobs.
The political landscape has been permanently reshaped over the past two years. Overreaching by elected officials—in the form of pork-laden “stimulus” spending, permanent bailouts, and policies that force responsible taxpayers to subsidize irresponsible behavior—has awakened something deep in our national character. This has led to a surge of activism by citizens demanding smaller, more accountable government and a repudiation of Washington in Tuesday’s elections.
Tired of politicians who refuse to listen, Americans who previously were not involved or minimally involved in the political process are now helping to drive it. While their backgrounds are as diverse as the country itself, their message to Washington is the same: Government leaders are servants of the people; the people are not servants of their government.
I do agree with Obama in one respect. Part of the problem is a communication problem. But, the problem doesn’t appear to be in getting the message out to the people. The problem appears to be getting the message from the people to the politicians.
Fortunately, elections allow the voters to solve that problem. Republicans started losing power in the ’06 elections because they were in a very similar place as Democrats were before Tuesday. And it took two election cycles for the Republicans to understand the message.
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