SERIOUSLY? THIS IS WHAT'S SENDING THE RIGHT TO THE FAINTING COUCH?

Bryan Preston at Pajamas Media:

Disgraceful: Obama Invokes Newtown Massacre to Pressure Republicans to Go Along with His Tax Hikes

During his press conference today, called to announce his new gun control task force, President Obama invoked the Newtown massacre to apply pressure on congressional Republicans in the fiscal cliff standoff.

OBAMA: If this past week has done anything it should give us some perspective. I-I-I-If there's one thing we should have, after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important....

This has to be one of the lowest moments of a very low presidency....

Yes, because no Republican president would ever use a crisis to justify his policy preferences:





Exact quote:

I want to remind the American people that the Congress has been working with us to provide relief. We passed monies for disaster relief, monies to help the people in New York. We passed appropriations to help beef up our security. We passed appropriations to help airlines. Yesterday, I proposed additional expenditures to help workers who have been laid off as a result of the September 11th tragedy. That spending totals about $60 billion.

And in order to stimulate the economy, Congress doesn't need to spend any more money -- what they need to do is to cut taxes. So I propose this: I propose that the United States Congress, as quickly as possible, pass tax relief equal to or a little bit greater than the monies that we have already appropriated.

Bush also ran a campaign ad in 2004 boasting about cutting taxes after 9/11:

Announcer: After recession, 9/11 and war, now our economy has been growing for ten straight months.

The largest tax relief in history....

Oh, and there was this at whitehouse.gov near the end of Bush's term:

President Bush demonstrated that letting people keep more of their own money leads to economic growth. In 2001, America was experiencing the unprecedented triple shock of a recession following the dot-com bust, economic disruption due to the terrorist attacks of September 11, and corporate accounting scandals. Fortunately, the country was able to overcome these challenges, in part because President Bush's tax relief put more money in families' pockets and encouraged businesses to grow and invest.

So spare me the sanctimony, Bryan.