Again – mixed messages!

The White House is sharply denying the Huffington Post story I noted below claiming that David Axelrod signaled a willingness to accept a temporary extension of all the Bush tax cuts, claiming that their position remains unchanged.

Axelrod emails:

There is not one bit of news here. I simply re-stated what POTUS and Robert have been saying. Our two strong principles are that we need to extend the tax cuts for the middle class, but we can’t afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy.

And White House comm director Dan Pfeiffer adds:

The story is overwritten. Nothing has changed from what the President said last week. We believe we need to extend the middle class tax cuts, we cannot afford to borrow 700 billion to pay for extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and we are open to compromise and are looking forward to talking to the Congressional leadership next week to discuss how to move forward. Full Stop, period, end of sentence.

The wording in the original HuffPo interview with Axelrod sure makes it sound like they are caving. Now the author of the post could have taken his words out of context, but if not then we really need to look at how good of a communicator David Axelrod is.

Again – mixed messages don’t do a damn thing except to piss off more people. The President needs to take care of this problem before it becomes a costly issue in the 2012 race.