Barbara Boxer must be slipping with her advanced age. According to reports, she now needs Chuck Schumer to remind her to label Republicans' budget cutting plans as "extreme." The hyper-partisan Boxer needs to be reminded of this???
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Democratic Senate leadership, got on a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning without realizing the reporters were already listening in. Schumer thought he was on a private line with four Democratic senators who were to talk with reporters about the current budget stalemate.
Schumer instructed the group, made up of Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Tom Carper of Delaware, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, to tell reporters that the GOP is refusing to negotiate.
He told the group to make sure they label the GOP spending cuts as "extreme."
"I always use extreme, Schumer said. "That is what the caucus instructed me to use."
I'm imaging Boxer's inner dialogue: "Wow, thanks Chuck. I was about to say that Republicans had extremely good ideas about the budget."
The joke, of course, is that Democrats have been labeling Republicans as extremists since, oh, about 1860. The "radical Republicans" talking point entered the lexicon in 1868 during the debates over passing the 13th and 14th Amendments and has never gone away. It doesn't matter if the issue is slavery, taxes, entitlements, or the free coinage of silver. Republicans are "extreme." Why an old pro like Boxer needs to be reminded of this is beyond me.
Of course, just as it's perplexing why Barbara Boxer needs coaching on labeling the GOP as extremists, it's also baffling why Republicans always seem to be caught off guard by liberals who robotically intone "extremextremextreme" in the media. The liberal hive mind is mind-numbingly predictable, yet Republicans always seem to fall silent when this "extreme" stuff comes up.
UPDATE: Rand Paul, at least, knows what to do with the "extreme" talking point.
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