An illustration of how the Left plays

Rule number one: shift the blame from your bad policies.

This photo came from an Indivisible “Day of Action” here in Salisbury in 2019. Little did we know then that there were much bigger insider forces aligned against Donald Trump than this tiny crowd of malcontents, which was maybe 1/10 of what the TEA Party drew.

I’ve stated before that I receive e-mail from Indivisible because I like to know what the opposition is up to and what they think.

Right now the biggest issue on the table is the debt ceiling, which we’ve known about for months. I don’t want to bore you with all the details, but suffice to say the Republicans passed a proposal that addresses the issue by combining a higher debt limit with spending cuts to make sure we take our time getting to that increased limit. Meanwhile, the Democrats simply wanted a “clean” debt ceiling increase so they could continue to spend our great-great-great-great grandkids’ inheritance at the vastly inflated levels established by the profligate plandemic spending.

(Rule number 1: when Democrats talk about a spending “cut” it simply means the increase isn’t as great as the baseline budgeting rules allow. If spending only goes up 8% instead of 10%, that’s a 2% cut to them.)

So here’s the messaging the Democrats are attempting, directly from an Indivisible e-mail and their polling: (My reaction is in italics.)

Always keep the focus on what’s at stake: defaulting on the debt. The technical mechanism for preventing a default is “raising the debt ceiling,” but if we just ask people whether or not they want to raise the debt ceiling, we lose the debate. (Thus, that’s the way we should be playing it.) People generally don’t know what that means, and it sounds vaguely bad -- like you’re agreeing to wasteful spending. (They are.) But if we instead frame the issue as a choice between raising the debt ceiling or defaulting on the national debt, we win the debate handily. (Their idea was to simply raise the debt ceiling and kicking the can down the road. The Republicans offered a different solution that addressed both.) So always remember: This is about default on the debt. We don’t want to; the other side is threatening to. (No they’re not, and eventually the Democrats will.)

Slashing funding for teachers and schools, and cutting Medicaid for disabled kids and seniors. Of everything in the GOP bill, the two least popular things are cuts to education and healthcare. (Remember their definition of cuts.) The GOP bill eliminates 108,000 teachers’ jobs, taking away educational support for 32 million kids in the country. (How many of these jobs were actually filled? They don’t say.) It would also put healthcare of 21 million people in jeopardy by slashing Medicaid, including seniors in nursing homes and children with disabilities. (This would be the COVID expansion, and remember, the pandemic is over.) These should be our leading arguments against this proposal -- we should repeat, repeat, repeat until they become as well known as the earlier attempt to cut Social Security and Medicare. (Something else which they’ve claimed Republicans would do for 40 years.)

We try to keep it simple, and those are the biggest takeaways. If you really want additional talking points, there are some others that scored high for us. The bill hikes heating bill costs for seniors and families, sticking them with a 20% higher heating bill next winter. (No proof, but I can attest that Democrat policies are more directly leading to this increase.) It also directly produces more hungry children and families, cutting food assistance for 400,000 people. (Another pandemic-related increase, and the pandemic is over.)

This is a vital argument. As Rep. Andy Harris described it, “the Limit, Save, and Grow Act… returns FY24 spending, except for military and Veterans Affairs, to pre-pandemic spending levels.”

Put another way: the pandemic is over - even Joe Biden says it is - so the need for emergency spending is over and the Republicans are returning spending to the pre-pandemic levels.

If it weren’t for COVID, we wouldn’t have had the spending for the extra teachers and Medicaid they claim is being cut. Their endgame is the higher baseline that we artificially put in place due to national emergency and the Democrat trifecta from that was in place 2021-22, and their recalcitrance to return spending to more normal levels. (Prior to the GOP taking over the House, the Democrats had no problem raising the debt ceiling nearly $3 trillion in a matter of months to allow for the shoveling of COVID cash. That’s what they wanted to do again.)

What they are trying to do, with the help of a compliant media, is pin the blame on the Republicans - business as usual. But we can use the Left’s tactics against them and have the truth on our side.

So on that note, I went on social media and on a post where she was slobbering all over Tom Carper because he’s retiring I hijacked the thread and asked our Congressman, Lisa Blunt Rochester, “So when are you going to tell the President he needs to negotiate in good faith and begin to claw back upspent COVID money and put fair work requirements on those who receive government assistance? Let's avoid the #BidenDefault.

I encourage you to do the same to our Democrat elected officials. Remember: it will always and forever be the #BidenDefault if we can message it properly because he’s the one who’s causing it by not negotiating in good faith with a GOP that has put up a prospective solution.