Obama goes partisan on tour, accuses GOP of throwing America under the bus

President Barack Obama waves before boarding his bus after having lunch and greeting people at The Old Market Deli, Monday, Aug. 15, 2011, in Cannon Falls, Minn., during his three-day economic bus tour. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest repeated the same language the next day during a press conference. “There’s no question that the president was frustrated,” Earnest briefed reporters, “that there were a small number of people in Congress who were willing to put their party ahead of country.”

Asked on Aug. 15 to explain this line of criticism, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that “by pointing out the dissatisfaction with Washington and pointing out what the public wants, I think the president is making clear that everyone — every one of the elected leaders in Washington, Congress and in the White House — need to be responsive to what the public is demanding in this case.”

Some observers clearly believe Obama’s strategy is a winner. Politico reported on Monday: “Considering that Republicans are in a far worse place than he is after the debt debate — with an all-time high party disapproval rating of 59 percent, according to a CNN/ORC poll — that message could catch.” (RELATED: Tea Party Express: Obama should copy our message, not our bus tour)

At least one Clinton-era adviser shares this view. “The president clearly believes that he pursued the path of compromise … [and] also believes that some of the resistance to compromise is rooted in premises that are very hard to defend rationally,” said William Galston, a senior domestic policy advisor to President Bill Clinton who is now a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.

Obama’s party-before-country message, Galston adds, “is obviously not a complete message, but there many Americans, probably a majority. who are disgusted with what’s going on in Washington and believe there are lot of people [in Washington] who who are not putting the country’s interests first.”

The president’s speech is the first of several scheduled during a three-state bus tour funded by the federal government, not by Obama’s 2012 campaign funds.

Carney is quick to defend this use of taxpayer funds. “The fact is that the president is not engaged in a primary election and he is doing what presidents do, which is go out in the country and engage with the American people, have discussions about the economy and other policy issues,” he said today in response to GOP criticism. “He’s having a Rural Economic Forum tomorrow, for example, as well as meeting with a host of local business leaders and private sector players in the economy … He’s out here doing his job and meeting with the American people.”

Despite describing Monday’s speech as part of a “listening tour,” Obama offered multiple criticisms of his political opposition. He did use the word “Republican” when he said that a “Massachusetts governor” supported the individual mandate on the state level.