If Joe O’Dea really wants to distinguish himself from the seven other Republicans challenging Democrat U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, he’d be better off changing his pronoun than in supporting that $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
O’Dea is obviously going for the moderate Republican and independent voters, like he’s the Joe Manchin of Colorado.
But the construction company executive should keep in mind that Manchin is more popular with the opposition party than within his own.
Here’s O’Dea’s reaction to the bill after it passed last week with 13 GOP House members siding with Pelosi’s Democrats. However, O’Dea is talking about the Senate vote that occurred in August:
“Senate Republicans and a couple Democrats who love their country more than their party have played this just right,” O’Dea said. “This is an actual infrastructure bill that’ll help working Americans, not the trillions of big government spending that Joe Biden and Michael Bennet wanted, and it doesn’t explode the national debt. If Michael Bennet had an ounce of the political courage that leaders like Rob Portman and Joe Manchin do, the country would be dramatically better for it.”
“I build things for a living. Construction jobs put food on the table and pay the bills. This infrastructure bill will upgrade roads, rails, bridges and upgrade broadband — key for rural Colorado to compete with Denver. It’s time to double down on the working people of this country and this infrastructure bill helps America do just that.”
We get it.
But siding with Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democrat Party on one of the most contentious pieces of legislation to go before Congress this year?
That’s going to come back to haunt him.
O’Dea’s spokesflack is mighty proud his candidate is not a politician, as well he should be.
It’s an endearing quality these days when real people seek to serve in public office.
But it’s endearingly naive to suggest it’s okay to blow a trillion dollars of the taxpayers money because it won’t “explode the national debt.”
A trillion here and a trillion there, pretty soon it adds up to the $28 trillion debt.
And Republicans hate debt. They hate questionable spending. And they really don’t trust Democrats with Biden and Pelosi leading the way.
If the political whiplash in Virginia showed us anything, it’s that voters are not feeling very bipartisany with the Democrats these days.
O’Dea would do well to save those talking points for the general election, and focus on actual Republicans as well as their independent compatriots to win the GOP primary.