"When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"

I've quoted David Frum before. In case some of you might not know/remember, he's a Republican. As a matter of fact, he's the former speechwriter for George W. Bush who actually coined the phrase "axis of evil." So he's no friend of liberals. But what he has done is call out the Republican crazies who are leading that party off a cliff.

What's interesting is that Frum also seems to be a better political analyst when it comes to these debt ceiling negotiations than front-pagers at the poutrage blogs.

For example, when Joan McCarter tries to analyze President Obama's strategy, here's what she sees:

There isn't a way around it. Obama seems to believe, and seems to be backed up by his advisers in the White House, that by dealing with the deficit now, by dealing with cuts to Social Security and Medicare now, he'll be neutralizing them as issues. Republicans will never give up these issues. What dday said: the next time Obama wants to try spending, to try to do something to create jobs, they'll cry "tax and spend liberal."

But when Frum watches what's going on, here's what he sees:

Isn’t it conceivable that Obama’s real end-game in these budget talks is to destroy Republican presidential fundraising for 2012 by goading congressional Republicans in 2011 into appearing maximally reckless and irresponsible?

If so, you have to say: the plan’s working brilliantly.

As we saw yesterday, it's also what Greg Sargent noticed back in April.

You have to wonder why those poutragers always think every strategy is aimed at messaging to politicians. Is it because that's all they have in their bag o' tricks? They don't seem to have the capacity to understand that a strategy might include a message to actual voters. You know, like those who have voted for/financially supported Republicans in the past but might be disgusted with their current tactics.

McCarter includes in her article a link to a firebagger who thinks the best word to describe what Obama is doing is "naive." I suppose this is all you can come up with when your analysis is the equivalent of "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." But really, is this the best they can do? When Frum trumps your analysis of Democrats, you just might be on your way to irrelevance.

If you haven't seen it already, rootless has some interesting analysis of this same phenomenon over at The People's View.