A gaffe in Washington, as they say, is when a pol accidentally tells the truth. In an article in the National Journal (subscription-only), House GOP Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry (N.C.), admitted that House Republicans’ campaign of opposition to Democrats’ anti-recession policies is motivated purely by politics:

“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said [McHenry], who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

In the vote on the stimulus bill in the House, Rep. McHenry and the GOP leadership marshaled their troops to produce a unanimous vote against the bill. Their message was loud and clear: Like Boss Limbaugh, they wanted the president to fail. As trite as it sounds, there is no difference in wanting the president to fail and wanting the country to fail. We learned this irrefutably from the presidency of George W. Bush, whose manifold failures contributed to the current crisis.

Leaving aside the stink of treachery, wishing failure on the president is a political loser — a sound bite that will likely be repeated in a marathon of Democratic campaign ads in the congressional elections next year.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who’s said he might run for president in 2012, backed away from the failure meme on Meet the Press on Sunday:

You’re irrational if you don’t want the president to succeed because if he doesn’t succeed, the country doesn’t succeed. I don’t think anyone should want the president of the United States to fail. I want some of his policies to be stopped, but I don’t want the president of the United States to fail. I want him to learn new policies.

(Of course, it was Speaker Gingrich who shut down the federal government in 1995 in a fit of pique after the Clinton White House made him sit in the back of Air Force One on an overseas trip.)

Rep. McHenry’s gaffe confirms that his party’s opposition to the stimulus and other proposed economic remedies is just what it appears to be: unprincipled political hackery. To engage in this sort of tomfoolery in the current environment means House Republicans either don’t take the economic crisis seriously — or that they are willing to pour gasoline on the bonfire of the U.S. economy on the hope they can take control of the smoking ruins after the collapse.

Greg Sargent at The Plum Line calledMcHenry’s office for confirmation. McHenry staffer Brock McCleary told Sargent that the congressman was standing by the quote.