You can put lipstick on a pig, Nancy, but it’s still a pig.
(The Hill) — Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Democrats have dropped the word “stimulus” from their vocabulary.
Though the House minority leader and her caucus are still pushing an economic stimulus agenda to save the economy, they’ve radically changed their rhetoric with the hope of winning over voters who saw “stimulus” as close to a dirty word.
Democrats are now being careful to frame their job-creation agenda in language excluding references to any stimulus, even though their favored policies for ending the deepest recession since the Great Depression are largely the same. . . .
Recognizing the unpopularity of the 2009 package, however, Democratic leaders have revised their message with less loaded language — “job creation” instead of “stimulus” and “Make it in America” in lieu of “Recovery Act” — in hopes of tackling the jobs crisis.
That’s a sharp shift from last year’s messaging strategy, when Pelosi issued hundreds of press releases touting the benefits of the 2009 stimulus bill in hopes of making believers of skeptical voters.
In the four months prior to last November’s elections alone, Pelosi’s office released more than 80 “fact sheets” highlighting media reports about local projects the stimulus law was supporting.