President Obama has accomplished more in his first half term than any President since FDR.
This is why the Republican Party is screaming and howling day in and day out. The programs implemented by the Obama Administration will offer an economic life line to everyday American people. Some of Obama's policies have seriously inconvenienced big business and big insurance, too. And this why the Republican Party has been threatening to repeal health care and financial reform the second it can get control of the levers of power.
But we are not going to let Republicans take back the power are we?
Meanwhile, Republicans and their tools in the mainstream media are all worked up and are pitching their predictable tiresome and hypocritical hissy fits because the President took a three day weekend break away from the White House.
I guess the Republican Party and its tools at Fox Fixed "News" forgot all about W.'s 2.7 years of absences from the White House during his eight years in office.
Republicans continue with their endless weeping, wailing, and relentless whinging over stupid silliness and they continue to say no, baby, no to everything that would repair our horrendous economy. Republicans are more focused on whining than on they are finding ways in which to create more jobs. Why anyone would want to vote for useless serial whiners is beyond me.
Of course the Republicans don't want to talk about issues. When a Party has no ideas or solutions for anything whatsoever there is nothing of worth for them to tell voters. It is easier for them to play rabid attack dog politics.
It's early 2011, Republican Congressional leaders are driving back from the White House after a bipartisan leadership meeting with the president, and blurt out almost together, "We're doomed!" The president will have already told the country from the Oval Office after the Democratic losses: "You don't have to take me behind the woodshed a second time. I heard you. These pointless partisan battles keep us from bringing the change you need."
The president will send up four big initiatives that have to be taken up on a bipartisan basis - or not at all. A Deficit Reduction Act that endorses his deficit commission's proposed spending freeze, entitlement reforms, the purging of corporate loopholes and tax increases. An Energy Independence and Climate Change Act that includes off-shore oil drilling but also the trading of carbon emissions, renewable energy and an end to oil company subsidies. An Expanded Trade and Export Act that embraces new Asian and Latin American trade agreements, but also ends tax breaks for companies that export jobs, and invests in the infrastructure that future industries will need to create jobs here. A Comprehensive Immigration Act that seals the borders and creates a new national identity card but also includes a path to citizenship for those here illegally.
The Republican leaders will choke on "poison pills." Polls show that half of those who identify as Republicans today are supporters of the Tea Party movement, and 90 percent of Tea Partiers say that Barack Obama is steering the country toward "socialism." That is why the House and Senate Republican caucuses will shun the president's outstretched hand. "No tax increases, no cap-and-trade, no amnesty," will be the new mantra. But voters will know whom to blame when nothing gets done.
For the president, this is either an immense opportunity to bring change or to win re-election in a 1964-like Lyndon Johnson landslide. Either would be O.K.
The future of the GOP does not sound as rosy as the Party and its tools in the media would like for us to believe. Of course the Republican strategists that have also contributed to the New York Times article above would disagree about their Party's future demise. At least, let's assume that they publicly disagree. But I wonder what the smarter and more moderate Republican strategists are thinking privately, knowing that half of their Party has been taken over by right wing extremists, some of whom literally scare the daylights out of moderate voters.
In Nevada, a very unpopular Harry Reid recently rose seven points in the polls because the tea party candidate is well, close to crazy. Tea party candidate Sharron Angle constantly reverses herself, sometimes within minutes of making a statement, many of which are simply irrational, horribly insensitive or are too extreme. Her women supporters, Independents and some Republicans have fled from Sharron Angle.
We can certainly hope that the tea party candidates like Sharron Angle will be the gifts that keep on giving to the Democratic Party. As in the case of Sarah Palin during the 2008 Presidential campaign, candidates like Sharron Angle are incapable of learning about rational policies and postures from their national GOP strategists and PR coaches. It's pretty near impossible to teach the unteachable.
I wonder how many other tea party candidates are also unteachable?
Update 7/20/10: Democrats surge ahead in recent Gallup poll. Folks are beginning to pay attention and are finally getting it.
Democrats deliver results for the people. Republicans obstruct everything that would help the people.
