“Their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules,” Obama said. “Well, I’m here to say they are wrong. . . . We shouldn’t be weakening oversight and accountability. We should be strengthening them.”
With so much attention devoted to the Republican primary contest in recent days, Tuesday was an opportunity for Obama to lay down a marker against any of the potential Republican nominees. His appearance in Kansas drew quick rebukes from Republicans.
Former GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, playing off Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” economic program, said Obama has given Americans a “raw deal.”
“When we think of former presidents, Barack Obama reminds me not of Teddy Roosevelt but of Jimmy Carter,” said Pawlenty, who has endorsed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination. Pawlenty made the remarks in a conference call with reporters arranged by Romney’s campaign.
As most of the provisions of his $450 billion American Jobs Act languish in Congress, Obama has barnstormed the country to build public support for the plan. The results have been modest, even though a majority of Americans say they favor most of his proposals.
Analysts said Obama’s eagerness to channel Republican presidents such as Roosevelt — as well as Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan — is aimed at marginalizing the current brand of Republicanism as a product of extremists and partisan ideologues.
Obama is “trying to show how far the Republican Party has strayed,” said Allan Lichtman, a professor of American history at American University. He is “trying to draw a contrast between a narrow, cramped, corporate Republican Party and the party of Lincoln and Roosevelt that sought liberty and represented ordinary people.”
Still, Obama delivered a scathing indictment of core Republican economic theory, with the GOP brand of “trickle-down economics” drawing some of the harshest criticism.
That theory, which holds that greater wealth at the top generates jobs and income for the masses below, “speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government,” Obama said. “It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked.”
Obama’s speech rang true to the partisan crowd of Democrats who turned out to see him in the heart of a deep-red state — even if the president got off to a bumbling start by mistakenly saying he was happy to “be back in Texas” before quickly correcting himself.
Audra Kelley, 31, an anti-
domestic-violence activist from Lawrence, Kan., was wearing an Occupy Wall Street button that read: “We are the 99% and we’re too big to fail.” She empathized with Obama’s inability to advance his agenda amid Washington’s gridlock.
“If the things that he has been trying to do weren’t blocked by obstructionists, we’d be a lot farther down the path to a better economic situation,” Kelley said. “The Republican Party is doing their best to stop anything, even if it’s something they supported 10 years ago. We need to just get back to trying to figure out what’s good for the entire country, not just the super-rich.”
Staff writers Anne Kornblut and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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