From zero to Nero, media edition

Drawing on this week’s BLS report on the Consumer Price Index, President Biden and his flacks promoted the idea that inflation had dramatically fallen to 0 percent last month. I noted the administration’s 0 percent chorus here yesterday. Is it too late to cancel the destructive monstrosity moving through Congress under the misnomer of the Inflation Reduction Act?

That is one question the Democrat media adjunct failed to raise as it fell into line yesterday reiterating the talking point of the day (video below). So far as I can tell from the video, however, even the media adjunct could not whip itself into repetition of the 0 percent line.

A footnote to our coverage of inflation and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). IRA is the word for “anger” or “rage” in Latin. It is there in the opening lines of Vergil’s Aeneid (Aeneas is “battered” by “the savage Juno’s unforgetting anger,” in Allen Mandelbaum’s translation). At NRO, Philip Klein reports that Joe Manchin himself appears to have been battered by IRA:

[T]he polling for Manchin is…brutal. It finds that 51 percent of registered voters now have an unfavorable opinion of him, compared to just 21 percent who have a favorable view. In the same poll last month, Manchin was nearly even, with 34 percent favorable and 35 percent favorable.

That means that in a matter of a few weeks, Manchin’s favorability dropped a net 29 points! And there’s no way that can be attributable to anything other than his public support for the Democrats tax, spend, Obamacare expansion, and IRS audit bill [i.e., the IRA].

To be clear, this is not a poll of his home state of West Virginia, and it is unclear whether Manchin will even run again when he is up for reelection in 2024.

But it does undercut the idea that this bill is broadly popular and will give Democrats a big boost in November.

I asked yesterday who could think it was a good look to retail the line that inflation had fallen to 0 percent. The inflation ignited by Biden stares us in the face every day. Voters are resistant both to the administration’s happy talk and the alleged charms of IRA.

Via Thaleigha Rampersad/Free Beacon.

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