GOP Underpants Gnomes

I don't really know what the GOP was thinking... first in rising to Obama's bait:

“There's an interesting reason why some of these [GOP critics] haven't put out their own budget,” the president said at Tuesday’s press conference. “I mean, we haven't seen an alternative budget out of them.”

Second, in their effort to appear as the "Party of NoYes!" they released a budget with no actual budget numbers.

The GOP's "Road to Recovery" packet, divided into sections on spending limits, job creation/tax reduction, and debt control, is certainly replete with big promises. The plan commits Republicans "to ensur[ing] that the federal budget cannot grow faster than families' ability to pay the bill" ... though it doesn't explain what metric the party would use to measure the "average" family's debt burden.

Another section of the GOP budget packet describes "a new tax deduction that allows businesses with less than 500 employees to take a tax deduction equal to 20% of their income" ... though it doesn't explain how much the new tax change would cost, nor whether it would be offset to help avoid increasing the deficit.

It's like he's in their heads... some sort of Jedi Mind trick. You can find the GOP plan here (PDF)... it does have nice pictures of kids and windmills though. The only person who's looking OK from this is Eric Cantor who has been quietly distancing himself from his fellows in the GOP leadership, and supporting Krugman style(!) bank nationalization efforts. He seemed like a buffoon during the election cycle, but maybe his reputation for being a smart operator isn't as unfounded as it appeared... certainly he seems to understand the mood of the country better than his comrades. Something to keep an eye on.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, the kids at Fark were way out in front on the Underpants Gnome Theory of GOP Politics.