Harry Reid sat down with Meet the Press over the weekend and had a few thoughts on the tea party.  Let’s start out with this comment from the Senate Majority leader: “I think the tea party's dying out as the economy's getting better slowly.”  Slowly is quite an understatement, Mr. Majority Leader.  Your guy, Barack Obama, and your Senate have presided over the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression.  Here’s just one way to measure …

Today, over 4 years since the recession started, there are still almost 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed.  That includes 5.6 million who are long-term unemployed for 27 weeks, or more than 6 months.  Under President Obama, America has suffered the longest period with so many in such long-term unemployment since the Great Depression.

The fact is that bigger government; bigger debt and more spending are some of the biggest factors playing into our lousy recovery.  These are the exact opposite ideas advocated by the tea party.  The tea party still has every reason to be angry, just as they did in 2010.  Notice that as the size and scope of our government has grown exponentially under Barack Obama, our economic recovery has been stagnant.  Coincidence?  Tea partiers and other conservatives think not.  But then again, Harry Reid is a Democrat who believes that America’s greatness comes from government. 

Then Harry Reid uses this year’s focus group word: extremism!  Sometime last year, Democrat strategists gathered a group of ordinary Americans into a room and flashed a bunch of different words at them and determined that Americans really don’t like the word “extremism.”  So the Democrat strategists took this observation and come up with a plan: We need to paint our political opponents as “extremists.”  No matter what they do, it is extreme.  Balanced budget?  Extreme!  Smaller government?  Extreme!  Getting rid of ObamaCare?  Extreme! 

Anyway, Harry Reid says, "I hope that the Republicans will understand, as they learned in the last week in the last year, that they can't be led over the cliff by this extremism.”  Reid is talking about the debate over the payroll tax extension.  Democrats also like to use this metaphor of pushing people off of a cliff, like grannies on Medicare.  It helps elevate the dialogue on these important issues, don’t ya think? 

Harry Reid also used another phrase that has made the list of Democrat talking points.  In discussing his Republican colleagues in Congress, he accused them not once but three times of “obstructionism on steroids.”  Here’s just a little bit of that conversation.

"First of all, I understand the frustration of the American people. I feel the same way. But understand that we've had obstructionism on steroids. The Republican leader, my counterpart, Mitch McConnell, said his number one goal at the beginning of this Congress was to defeat President Obama, not have him re-elected, and that's how they've legislated. We've spent months on things that used to happen just matter of factly; raising the debt ceiling, we did it for President Reagan 18 times and we spent two and a half months doing that. So the number one goal, and I hope the Republicans have learned a lesson, as extending the payroll tax. That was a disaster for them. Can you imagine Republicans, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, were opposed to lowering taxes? So I would hope that they understand that everything doesn't have to be a fight. Legislation's the art of working together, building consensus, compromise, and I hope that the tea party doesn't have the influence in this next year they had in the previous year. That--because it has been really bad for this country. And I understand, I repeat, why the American people feel the way they do."

For starters:  If Congress is really serious about job creation then I can’t blame the Republicans for making Obama’s defeat their number one goal.  I just explained yesterday how businesses and people around this country are essentially in a holding pattern, waiting to do anything until they know if Barack Obama will be defeated. 

Harry Reid seems very upset with McConnell wanting to defeat Barack Obama, and yet Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats in the Senate have failed to pass a budget in almost three years … presumably for the purposes of their own reelection campaigns.  They didn’t want to present a giant budget that would allow the Republicans to skewer them for their spending increases and tax hikes, so instead the Democrats just decided not to do it.  Harry Reid himself said that it would be “foolish” for Democrats to offer a budget plan.  Meanwhile, the Republicans in the House pass a budget but they are the ones who are considered “extreme.”

By the way, don’t count on the ObamaMedia to point out the fact that we are going on three years without a budget from Democrats in the Senate.  This doesn’t fit into their Obama/Democrat election narrative.