Obama: Media Pushes ‘False Equivalence’ That Gridlock Has Bipartisan Blame
President Obama spoke at a fundraiser Thursday night, and during the event he went after Republicans for causing so much political gridlock, and the media for saying that political gridlock has bipartisan blame, a “false equivalence” the president decried. The president has shown this kind of bluntness in many a fundraiser so far; back in March he said Democrats always get “clobbered” in midterm years because they aren’t as active and fired up as the Republican base is.
And last night, he placed all the blame for Washington gridlock on the GOP, a narrative he said the media is ignoring in favor of a more politically balanced one.
“You’ll hear if you watch the nightly news or you read the newspapers that, well, there’s gridlock, Congress is broken, approval ratings for Congress are terrible. And there’s a tendency to say, a plague on both your houses. But the truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific.”
Obama went on to blame intransigent Republicans for blocking bill after bill in the House, Republicans who are “so ideologically rigid,” as opposed to Democrats, who the president said have not been as ideological and are more willing to compromise. He insisted liberals have not been pushing “radical proposals” with “wild-eyed romanticism.”
He concluded, “So when you hear a false equivalence that somehow, well, Congress is just broken, it’s not true. What’s broken right now is a Republican Party that repeatedly says no to proven, time-tested strategies to grow the economy, create more jobs, ensure fairness, open up opportunity to all people.”
[h/t Greg Sargent]
[image via screengrab]
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