'Tea Party Economics' Label Should Be Used on GOP: Schumer

Democrats need to blame Tea Party economics for the slow recovery, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, said in a memo that provides a glimpse into the rhetoric the party is planning to lob at Republicans going into a heated 2012 election cycle.

Schumer, the New York senator who handles messaging and political strategy for the Democrats, drafted a guide for his party on ways to tie Republicans to the Tea Party, which is becoming increasingly unpopular.

The GOP's opposition to President Barack Obama's $447 billion jobs package, as a whole, leaves the party open to blame for the economy in 2012, Schumer wrote.

If Republicans continue opposing job-creating measures, they risk being blamed for whatever economic reality the country confronts in 2012, Schumer wrote. But Democrats must make this case.

To make that case, Democrats should refer to opposition to job-creating measurers as Tea Party economics, opponents of the jobs package as Tea Party Republicans and argue that obstruction will lead to a Tea Party recession, the memo issued Wednesday said.

The memo includes supporting quotes from Moody's Economist Mark Zandi, a former advisor to Sen. John McCain, R-Ari., the Congressional Budget Office director and Republican economist Martin Feldstein, among other analysts.

In this debate over jobs, the Tea Party's growing unpopularity has the potential to be the GOP's Achilles' Heel, Schumer wrote.

He also contended that the movement's popularity has dropped in part because of the debt-ceiling imbroglio, in which Tea Party supported Republicans refused to sign onto a multi-trillion dollar deficit reduction deal that included revenue.

By linking the GOP to the Tea Party, Democrats could bolster the prospects of Obama's job plan, or least make clear who is responsible for the stalling of the recovery, the memo said.

Tea Party Economics(1)