Obama's New Talking Point

The debt deal raises additional hurdles for Republican presidential candidates, argues Ed Kilgore in The New Republic.

The big debt limit vote in Congress, it is increasingly obvious, is just an appetizer for the divisive, voter-alienating struggles it has built into the schedule at key points during the 2012 presidential campaign, making an eventual GOP presidential nominee’s efforts to “pivot to the center” an athletic feat, at best. And as Tea Party activists and other conservatives have made clear in their reactions to the deal just signed, their efforts to force everyone in the GOP to join in future hostage-taking exercises aimed at middle-class entitlements and other targets beloved of voters have just begun.

Kilgore may overstate the case here. My own guess is that once a nominee has secured the levers of power inside the party, the congressional Republicans will be less inclined to force confrontations. But I could well be wrong: I failed to imagine that the congressional GOP would drive so far down the road to a national debt default, but they did.

But the insight behind the Kilgore prediction is valid:

When running against an incumbent, you want to keep the focus on the incumbent. Congressional Republicans have set up a dynamic whereby their own intentions will become at least as important an issue in 2012 as Obama's record. When Republicans say, "Obama failed to create jobs," the Democrats can now plausibly rejoin, "Republicans want to abolish Medicare for everybody under 55." And Republicans - instead of putting the vote-destroying Ryan plan behind them - will be compelled to reargue it and reargue it again repeatedly through the election year.