Yeah, bonehead. The republicans have only been offering a small slice of the top 1% of americans and corporate america a free lunch, and more. Gotta love that 2003 welfare handout to big pharma. Brilliant. Or how about all the welfare shoveled to haliburton for the king and darth vader's retirement plans. Or how about the welfare handouts to the financial industry. Or how about the welfare handouts to military contractors. Or, or, the list is endless. I guess it's all a matter of perspective and marketing. What a bonehead.

The GOP needs Governors giving these messages not politicians with a paper trail that contradicts the claim they are trying to make. Any Republican who was in the House or Senate under the Bush Administration has any ground to stand on. They should look to primary out any Senators who are in safe Red seats, get new blood and new voices not stained by their complicity to the Bush years.

Just don't pick Jindal (who chooses the person to give the rebuttal - was Jindal set-up to fail? A political hit of sorts by a connected rival).

Boner admits to failing at his job and especially the last 8 years! his new tactic...he's trying honesty.

It's simply harder to sell their own ideas to the public

...well, yes, but only because they've already been tried and didn't work...

compared to the easy answers offered by the Democrats

Wait, "spend trillions of the public's dollars" is an "easy answer"? Funny, I've never thought of that as a particularly easy sell.

Boehner-nomics baby!

"Let them eat cake" has never been a popular political slogan. Hard to sell it to people who might have access to a guillotine...

The modern Republican party was founded on the ultimate free lunch. Reagan in 1980: Raise defense spending, cut taxes and balance the budget.

If you're bidding for votes, it's hard to top that.

Did I mention I cain't spel?

s-i-m-u-l-t-a-n-e-o-u-s-l-y

the repubs are done. period. it's a regional party. the south has finally been defeated.

Republicans say things like this, and it always make me wonder: does it really never occur to them that the reason Americans aren't "buying" their ideas is because they're bad ideas? Or do they know that, but they are simply lying?

I go back and forth on it all the time. Perfidy or incompetence seems to be the only two choices for their behavior, and certainly neither option is good in a bunch of people who (supposedly) want to run the government.

There is no such thing as a "free lunch," tax cuts cost too. I guess, Boehner doesn't remember the big tax cuts, accompanied by soaring deficits during the Reagan administration.

One of the leaders of a party that offered tax cuts during one war, and anotherwar that would pay for itself is accusing dems of offering a 'free lunch' to the American people?

Well, here's a suggestion: start of by conceding that lunches exist, and stop obstructing the preparation of any kind of non-breakfast/non-supper type meal, then move on to the cost/benefit analysis... just a suggestion

Republicans offered us free tickets to the whorehouse without a condom in our pockets. It felt nice for a night, rest is history.

I'm talking about "taxcuts."

I see they've decided to martyr themselves. See, only they have the answers, and they're hard answers for we mere mortals to understand. Way to patronize the American public. It also seems somewhat Calvinistic...as if their so called "hard" way must inherently be better.

For the past few decades, I've thought that as a society one of the biggest problems we seem to be suffering from is the refusal to take any responsibility for personal and collective actions.

If your child does poorly in school, it's the teachers fault. If you get a traffic ticket, it's the cop's fault. If you spill hot coffee on yourself because you were trying to drive and drink at the same time, it's the restaurant's fault and they should pay you for your suffering.

On the collective level, we spent and spent and spent and delayed action on infrastructure, education, health care..the list goes on.

And now, the GOP leaders are insisting that it's not their fault that Americans don't get their message. Obama is too charismatic. The Republicans need more bling to make their message resonate. And now comes my favorite: of course the American people hate us--Democrats will give them anything they want.

The problem the Republicans have right now is that they haven't figured out that we're weary of skirting our responsibilities. We've been waiting for a way out of the wilderness. And finally, we've got a leader who calls on us to think again about more than ourselves and to delay our gratification so that we can actual solve some of our larger problems.

They don't have any plans of their own because they been the party of blame for thirty years. They think it's everybody's fault but theirs, and frankly, I hope they keep thinking that all the way to total and complete irrelevancy.

So if Republicans are having a hard time selling their ideas because Americans prefer a free lunch, doesn't that confirm America is not, in fact, a center-right country whose citizens detest entitlements and Big Government?

Republican stalwarts seem not to have awakened to the realization that shouting "entitlements" and "Big Government" no longer calls forth images of teaming urban ghettos. Not for most Americans, anyway, and certainly not now that so many are scared out of their minds about their jobs, their houses and their health care.

These guys are frozen in amber clinging to an idealized version of Ronald Reagan. I was 20 when Reagan took office. I'll turn 50 next year. These guys need to get over it and move on.

Tax cuts and no are not ideas.

I think TPM used the wrong headline for this. Your headline should be: "Boehner Thinks the American People Want a Free Lunch."

That's the striking and politically important, even explosive, aspect of his statement. He's suggesting that the America people are looking for the easy way out, and not willing to do what's hard. We can debate the veracity of that perspective (and likely conclude it's severely misguided), but that doesn't mitigate the ramifications of Boehner, a leader of the Republican Party, intimating that Americans are lazy and want handouts.

I think this statement confirms that if anyone is lazy here, it's the Republicans. They simply aren't willing to put in the intellectual lifting necessary to make themselves appealing to the American people. [HINT: Suggesting that voters are lazy won't help your cause.]

Boehners Taxcut Elixir - Combats Liberal Leanings, Guarantees Victory, Will Make You Rich, Smokes out Terrorists, Balances the Budget, Grows back hair, Good for Cleaning Guns

Who will be the first to buy a bottle?

"Those of us that believe in a smaller, more accountable government, we have a tougher time making our principles relevant to the American people"

So, who was in charge of the American government for most of the last 8 years, and the US Congress, for most of the last 15 years? They had their control. They had their chance. Look at the result. The problem is not their inability to deliver their message to the American people. The problem is the American people got the message and disapprove of it.

The reason it's hard to sell GOP ideas to Americans is that most Americans just don't have that kind of money.