Jan 22 Bob Casey Exposed

In 2006, I wrote fairly frequently that Bob Casey was an embarrassment, though not at the level of an Al Franken embarrassment. (A matchup against Mark Dayton, though, would be competitive.) Last night, on Greta's show, Sen. Casey confirmed why I thought he deserved to be called an embarrassment. Here's a portion of the transcript of that interview:

GRETA: For those who say that it's a wake-up call, I'm thinking, well, this has been coming.

SEN. CASEY: I think part of it is, when you're focused on, like I know I was, on health care for an extended period of time, the way this place tends to work is it's hard to get important priorities into the conversation, and if you aren't talking about an issue, I think it leads to the impression, I think it's inaccurate often, that we're not moving fast enough on job creation.

So I think we need to focus on it substantively, and I would argue that we need to pass very strategic, short term policies that will have a positive impact on jobs, like a jobs creation tax credit.

That's insulting. He's essentially saying that it's just our perception that jobs aren't being created. He also said that it's just our perception that jobs aren't being created at a fast enough clip.

EARTH TO SEN. CASEY: We've lost jobs by the millions since President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law. This isn't a perception problem. It's a reality problem. Here's a healthy dose of reality: If President Obama and this Democratic Congress don't put in place policies that create jobs, they'll be in for a number of rough election cycles.

Sen. Casey is wrong, too, in saying that Congress needs to focus on short term, targeted policies. In another part of the interview, he talked about a 1 year tax cut. While Democrats think of that as a tax cut, people living out in the Heartland call that a tax rebate.

When President Reagan was faced with a faltering economy, he permanently cut taxes, then got out of the way. The rest is history.

Sen. Casey's policies highlights the inherent weakness of the Democrats' policies. They're control freaks by nature, which is proven by the attempted micromanagement of the U.S. economy. It also highlights their belief that government gets first dibs on your wages.

This portion of the interview proves that Sen. Casey isn't in touch with reality:

GRETA: Would you say that the stimulus bill of last February has had its effect on your state, its intended effect or are you disappointed in it?

SEN. CASEY: Well, disappointed in it because it's not moving fast enough so I think the strategy not only has to be to have new job creation policies on the table but to push the recovery bill faster. We've seen a lot of positive results but sometimes the perception doesn't match the reality, it doesn't matter what the reality is. We have to convince Americans that we're serious about job creation strategies even as we're pushing the recovery faster.

I'd love knowing what things Sen. Casey has seen that he considers positive. Is Sen. Casey saying that the pork-filled legislation has produced positive results? What proof do we have of that? Let's hope he isn't relying the jobs created or saved website for his proof.

Sen. Casey is up for re-election in 2012. If Sen. Santorum is interested, I think he'd have an easy time defeating this buffoon, especially now that he's been exposed as a lightweight.

It wouldn't surprise me to find out that Pennsylvania voters are experiencing buyer's remorse now that they can compare Santorum's gravitas against Casey.

Comments welcome at LFR.