The Two Sequester Narratives

     Some Obama allies and outside groups who support the White House, are starting a comprehensive campaign against sequestration.

     "Outside allies of the White House are ratcheting up efforts to drive home the fact that the bite of the sequester is genuinely beginning to sink in around the country. And they are ramping up messaging on a mostly overlooked aspect of the sequester battle: The fact that Congressional Republicans have near-unanimously supported a fiscal blueprint that would cut spending far more deeply than the sequester. I’m talking about the Paul Ryan budget."

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/03/white-house-allies-roll-out-new-campaign-on-sequester/

    This is what it comes down to: there has to be an understanding bthe sequester is about real pain and its effects are being felt in communities across the country. This is what the fiight is about: we have to actually have the acknowledgment that the pain is actually happening. The counter GOP narrative is that these cuts aren't so bad and can be dealt with if agencies can simply use common sense and trim the "fat." The Republican narrative is that Obama exaggerated the effects of the sequester and that stopping the White House tours was just a political stunt:

     "The American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, a c4 allied with the White House, has created a Web site called “C-Quest,” which is a play on “C-Span” and is all about the sequester. The Web site is designed to focus attention on how the sequester is impacting actual communities around the country, as a corrective to the Beltway’s emphasis on the sequester as a political story, one that the White House has supposedly botched by over-hyping the sequester’s impact."

     "The Web site is also accompanied by a Web video that collects local news segments from around the country on the sequestration’s cuts, and makes the point that Paul Ryan’s budget cuts would dwarf those of the sequester."

       The White House rightly sees sequestration as a long term battle. 

      "This is yet another indication that Democrats see this battle as a long game. With mounting evidence that the cuts are beginning to be felt all over the country — evidence collected in an extensive Huffington Post piece the other day — White House allies are hoping to shift the attention of the political press to the experience of the sequester outside the Beltway."

     This is what on the other side Grover Norquist had said after he agreed to allow Republicans to vote for higher taxes on the rich: the battle over spending is gong to be a two year battle. This battle though is not just between Democrats and Republicans or Obama and the House, but Republicans against themselves. Their own messaging on this has been shizophrenic as their position is just as their position onMedicare has been since the rise of the Tea Party. Who can forget that woman at a rally who demanded that "You take your government hands off of my Medicare?!"

      So the GOP has basically had two positions on the sequester:

      1. WHOOPEEE! We finally won one. The President tried to scare us all with all this talk of furloughs and cutbacks on air transporters but clearly none of that has happened. 

      2. However, these cuts have really hurt my state. There's no reason to cut essential services like air transport! The White House is delibeartly applying the cuts in ways which are painful to the American people to score points and disguise the fact that the sequester is no pain for the American people. 

      In Kansas we see a microcosm of this schizophrenic debate: