Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post joins Jay and me on Need to Know this week. We discuss Republican options vis a vis the fiscal cliff, ask whether Obama has become Mohammed Morsi, and present one action item: We need a conservative summit to present the stakes in the budget battle. No disrespect intended to Boehner and McConnell, but this is simply too important to be left to them. It may not be possible, but we must try to convince the American people that they’ve been lied to — that raising taxes alone cannot fix our fiscal predicament and that the nation is heading to destruction if we fail to get spending under control and promote economic growth.
We picture Republicans governors and former governors, economists, intellectuals, journalists, actors — anyone who is persuasive — to lay out the numbers for the American people at a conference that will be covered by C-SPAN and the blogosphere. Otherwise, the Democrats will surely succeed in portraying Republicans as defending the interests of the rich.