In a post called “Obama Liquidates Himself,” Paul Krugman calls the spending freeze “appalling on every level,” and accuses Obama of embracing John McCain (emphasis added):

It’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”

Indeed, in this exchange during a 2008 debate with then-candidate John McCain, Barack Obama appears skeptical of the idea of a spending freeze:

MCCAIN: How about a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs.
LEHRER: Spending freeze?
MCCAIN: I think we ought to seriously consider with the exceptions the caring of veterans national defense and several other vital issues.
LEHRER: Would you go for that?
OBAMA: The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel. There are some programs that are very important that are under funded. I went to increase early childhood education and the notion that we should freeze that when there may be, for example, this Medicare subsidy doesn’t make sense.
Let me tell you another place to look for some savings. We are currently spending $10 billion a month in Iraq when they have a $79 billion surplus. It seems to me that if we’re going to be strong at home as well as strong abroad, that we have to look at bringing that war to a close.

Though Obama’s proposed freeze would be “aggregate,” meaning that some discretionary programs could see increases while others see cuts (perhaps this is the “scalpel” to which he was here referring) Krugman’s hysterics raise an important question: Cui bono from this proposal? Who does the president win over?

My guess is centrist Democrats in the neighborhood of Evan Bayh, and that portion of the independent electorate who 1) are to the right of Obama on fiscal policy and 2) don’t see this proposal as a calculated political pose. But that leaves the independents who do think this is a calculated political pose — not to mention the centrist and conservative Republicans who know it is — and it won’t win anything more from these groups than the “golf clap” one blogger suggested the president was owed. Worse yet for Obama, the progressives are going ballistic and saying things like “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”

That ain’t exactly a victory coalition.