Marching Orders

This is pretty funny: a group of Senate Democrats headed by Chuck Schumer held a conference call with reporters to talk about the Dems’ position on the budget. Not realizing that the reporters were already on the line, and apparently not being familiar with the “mute” button, Schumer started instructing his colleagues:

Mr. Schumer told them to portray John Boehner of Ohio, the Speaker of the House, as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme. “I always use the word extreme,” Mr. Schumer said, “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”

In this context, I assume “the caucus” means Harry Reid. Actually, though, I could have delivered those instructions–they are hardly anything new. We showed here how “extreme” the Republicans’ budget proposals really are.
The other funny thing about the story is that the Democrats were completely unchastened by the fact that the reporters overheard their pre-game huddle. They went blithely ahead with their talking points, as planned. N.Y. Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer concludes her article, “How news is made…”

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