'Does The White House WANT To Lose?'

That’s the question that Walter Russell Mead is asking, complete with the upper case letters in his headline:

According to the Washington Post, President Obama has decided to support a continuing government role in the housing market and plans to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac operating with government guarantees into the indefinite future.

The decision is a GOP dream come true and could play a significant role in the campaign.

If you wanted to link ACORN and community organizers with Wall Street profiteers and nationally unpopular liberal icons like Barney Frank, handing the Fannie Mae issue to the GOP in 2012 is the way to do it.  Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner laid out a GOP roadmap in Reckless Endangerment.  According to their (controversial) account, Fannie Mae was a kind of Democratic Enron as poverty hustlers united with Wall Street profiteers to rape the Treasury while abusing the poor; the net cost to the taxpayers for Fannie and Freddie could well reach $389 billion.

Imagine the ads.

Fair enough — lots of raw material here to work from:

Also in the “Does the White House Want to Lose” category, “Obama’s Ag Secretary: We Do Have a Jobs Program. It’s Called ‘Food Stamps.'”

As Ace writes, “I think six campaign commercials just began filming.”