Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the perfect example of what is wrong with the Democrats...they don't care about the truth or what's good for America...all they want to do is "spin"/Lie about anything they want put in place....she was a loose cannon before she became the DNC chairman and she will continue to be a loose cannon...Hopefully she will help show the American People just why they should NOT vote for Democrats.....It doesn't surprise me that Obama, Ed Rendell and David Axelrod aren't upset with her commments...they also have big problems with the truth and what's best for America! It's no wonder she was chosen to run the party....and they say the Tea Party is nuts?????
Debbie Wasserman Schultz has rocky DNC start
By MOLLY BALL | 6/10/11 4:41 AM EDT
Democrats knew they were getting an outspoken partisan when Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz took over the reins of the Democratic National Committee a month ago.
But they might not have known just how outspoken.
In the four weeks since she succeeded Tim Kaine, Wasserman Schultz has been called out by four nonpartisan fact-checkers for mischaracterizing the GOP’s Medicare plan.
She’s accused Republicans of wanting to reinstate segregation and of waging a “war on women.” She has asserted, somewhat nonsensically, that the GOP wants to make illegal immigration — by definition against the law — “a crime.” She’s also been mocked for driving a foreign car after pounding Republicans for not supporting the American auto industry.
A rank-and-file member of Congress typically wouldn’t get noticed for inflammatory language and rhetorical slip-ups. But Wasserman Schultz has a higher profile now — and was hired precisely because of her skills as a communicator.
No one seems ready to declare her the Democratic version of Michael Steele, the gaffe-prone former Republican National Committee chairman whose rhetorical and administrative missteps led numerous party leaders to publicly insist he had to go. But some Democrats are already privately fretting about the media-loving Wasserman Schultz’s tendency to put her foot in her mouth — after all, her ability to be the party’s frontwoman and messenger was a major reason President Barack Obama selected her as chairwoman.
One Democratic consultant with DNC ties said Wasserman Schultz is accustomed to operating on her own and will have to learn to tone it down now that she is the spokeswoman for her party and president.
“This is a growing pain that she and Team Obama are going to need to figure out, and it’s a good thing for both sides that she’s making the gaffes now — so that they can address this,” the consultant said.
David Axelrod, the Democratic strategist and top Obama political adviser, said the president and his team are pleased with Wasserman Schultz’s performance and have no second thoughts about her selection to head the party.
“The question is, on the whole, is she effective? Is she doing a good job? Does she inspire people? Is she an effective spokesperson for the party? I think the answer to that is yes,” Axelrod said. “That’s not to say that every comment is pitch perfect, but show me the person in public life whose comments are 100 percent pitch perfect.”
Ed Rendell, the former DNC chairman and former Pennsylvania governor, said Wasserman Schultz’s flubs have been minor ones.
“Even a congressman doesn’t get the exposure that the chairman of the Democratic National Committee gets,” he said. “When I became chair in 2000, I made three or four stumbles out of the gate. That’s going to happen, and you adjust to the scrutiny you’re going to get, and I’m sure you’ll see those minimized in the future.”
Republicans, now led by mild-mannered party chairman Reince Priebus, who will debate Wasserman Schultz for the first time Sunday on “Meet the Press,” are gleeful over her bumpy rollout. Conservative blogs are seizing on her excesses — a luxury they did not have with Kaine, her more measured predecessor — and the RNC and other party organs have been churning out a near-constant stream of press releases about the congresswoman’s flubs.
Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor-turned-media personality, wrote about Wasserman Schultz’s “rough start” in his email newsletter last week, saying, “It is reassuring to know that there’s someone standing by to step in, just in case Joe Biden needs time off.”
The emerging idea of Wasserman Schultz as a strident loose cannon was underscored this week when the conservative group American Crossroads released a YouTube video dubbing her “Debbie Downer,” after the buzz-killing “Saturday Night Live” character.
“You’re so happy and free, turn on cable TV, and along comes Debbie Downer,” the video’s jaunty jingle goes. After mocking some of her recent comments, it concludes: “Obama’s chair of the DNC’s got a case of foot-in-mouth disease, and we’re just begging: Don’t shut up, please!”
The conservative blogosphere took special pleasure in deconstructing her statement that “If it were up to the candidates running for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars. They would have let the automobile industry in America go down the tubes.”
The RNC promptly dug up the Florida vehicle registration for the Japanese car the congresswoman drives. Though Wasserman Schultz meant that if the U.S. carmakers had been allowed to go bankrupt, only foreign cars would be available, Republicans charged she wasn’t supporting the American auto industry with her own purchasing decisions.
The congresswoman’s latest blunder came Sunday, when she said on television that Republicans “want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally — and very transparently — block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates.”
The equating of state legislatures’ efforts to require voters to show identification with laws that required separate schools and water fountains raised hackles, particularly in racially sensitive Democratic circles, prompting a quasi-retraction from Wasserman Schultz. In a statement, she said, “Jim Crow was the wrong analogy to use. But I don’t regret calling attention to the efforts” of GOP legislators “to restrict access to the ballot box.”
She has not backed down from her description of Rep. Paul Ryan’s House-approved plan to restructure Medicare, despite a chorus of stern disapproval from fact-checkers.
Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” last week, the congresswoman said Republicans “would take the people who are younger than 55 today and tell them, ‘You know what? You’re on your own. … We’re going to throw you to the wolves and allow insurance companies to deny you coverage and drop you for pre-existing conditions.’”
The verdict was swift and merciless. FactCheck.org: “DNC Chair Throws Truth to ‘Wolves.’” The Associated Press: “Democrats distort GOP Medicare plan.” The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog: “Wasserman Schultz’s bogus claim.” PolitiFact.com: “We rate her statement False.”
The watchdogs pointed out that rather than being “on [their] own,” seniors would get subsidies from the government under the Ryan plan and that the plan would explicitly prohibit insurers from denying coverage.
Democrats defend Wasserman Schultz on these points, calling them hair-splitting and asserting that the promised subsidies would be insufficient and coverage prohibitively expensive for those with severe pre-existing health problems. Republicans’ insistence on precision, they say, is disingenuous considering all the liberties they took with “death panels” and a supposed government takeover of health care during the health care debate.
“Like most Democrats, I applaud Debbie Wasserman Schultz for speaking honestly and forcefully,” Democratic consultant Karen Finney said. “The Ryan plan is another GOP trickle-down economic scheme, so [I’m] grateful to her for standing up and speaking out on behalf of our party.”
Wasserman Schultz’s sharpest rhetoric — such as insisting that Republicans’ move to defund Planned Parenthood and restrict abortion constitutes a “war on women” or that the Ryan plan would be a “death trap for some seniors” — may please her party’s base. But it doesn’t square with her role as a leading voice decrying that kind of over-the-top language in the wake of the January shooting in Tucson that injured her good friend, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse brushed off the idea that Wasserman Schultz needs to be more disciplined, calling it a GOP-manufactured attempt to divert attention from Republicans’ political problems.
“With an anemic and uninspiring Republican [presidential] field, and after getting outraised two-to-one last month by the DNC, it is not surprising that Republicans are looking for a distraction,” Woodhouse said. “Strongly and forcefully outlining the Republicans’ plans to force seniors off of Medicare, restrict women’s access to health care services and to make it harder for scores of Americans to vote is obviously making Republicans uncomfortable, defensive and in need of a change in the subject.”
But Huckabee, in his newsletter, had another take.
“You know, personally, she has my sympathy,” he wrote. “In these days when there are far too many partisan attack dogs stirring up divisiveness and vitriol, it kind of speaks well for her that she’s that bad at it.”
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