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The GOP is full of fuck-ups so anything that can be done without their input is bound to better than if they actually got down to the business of governing. A party that believes that government is the problem isn’t about serving the people; they are only interested in what they can wring out of government before they cast it aside to find employment in the private sector. It’s why they preach the mantra of “hands off the free market.” That works until the market gets too big for its own britches and they come to the government for help. Like now. Gotcha!
President Obama ignored partisan motherfuckers like me who felt that handing republicans their asses would be a just reward for their behavior during the Reign of King George IV aka Chimpy McFlightpants. The people wanted to see the end of gridlock and the partisan wrangling. Somehow the memo never reached the RNC or any of their appointed leaders. Recent Gallup Poll numbers now say that republicans have an approval rating of 31 percent compared to Democrats’ rating of 48 and the President’s rating of 67%. With 58 percent disapproving of republican conduct you would think they would try a new tactic since this one isn’t working. Nope. That’s their plan and they’re sticking to it.
Over the past few weeks they’ve shown what distain they have for the choice the American people made last November. Their self-appointed leader, Rush Tub-a-lard, has made no secret of his opinion that he wishes Obama would fail presumably so we could try all of the failed NeoCon policies all over again while a new bunch of crooks feed at the taxpayers’ trough. No, thank you.
The President, however, was single minded in his desire to reach out to republicans. He didn’t get much for his efforts. I take that back. He got plenty for those efforts. It just wasn’t what he was expecting to get. For example, he reached out to his vanquished opponent, John McCain, and got bit in the hand for the effort. McCain went so far as to call the stimulus package “generational theft” which contained “corporate giveaways.” Strong words from the bozo that voted for all of Chimpy’s budgets which brought us from Clinton’s surpluses to major deficits and contained more corporate largess than you could shake a stick at. Party standard bearer John McCain: hypocrite to the end.
President Obama’s outreach to House Republicans was met with a similar fate. After including tax cut proposals they wanted and eliminating some of the spending they did not care for and attending their caucus meeting to talk to them about the plan he got exactly zero votes for his efforts. They even went so far as to lie about what was in the stimulus hoping to generate their base to rise up against it. That PR effort failed. It did teach the president to wait for some concrete effort on the part of the GOP before consenting to any compromises in the future. Take that, dumbasses.
A brief mention about his dinner with rightwing talking heads: they got an ego boost from it and President Obama got more vitriol from the lot of them in their next columns. I could have told him that they were only interested in talking to him if he was going to agree with them 100%. They are not interested in compromise. They think they already have all the answers even if time and experience shows all those answers to be wrong.
Judd Gregg is the icing on this cake of bipartisan bullshit. He agrees to serve the president and the country as Secretary of Commerce and then he backs out because he cannot wrap his pea brain around Obama’s desire to put bipartisanship first. I guess that old fashioned concept of serving your country when your president calls upon you only applies if the President is a NeoCon like yourself. Don’t bother if he isn’t. Put your NeoCon values ahead of the country.
Wait. Isn’t that what the last eight years was all about? NeoCon values, then country? Yep. I thought so. Maybe President Obama is on to something here. Keep reaching out to the NeoCons and make them slap your hand away so you can have free reign to pursue the correct strategy instead of the bastardized policy that they would have some influence upon. Brilliant. They’ll never get it.
Inspirational link: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/13/obamas-bipartisanship/
Judd Gregg. What a dork wad. One of the few elected members of Congress from New England that claims to be a republican and he comes in and lays the big goose egg when the president asks him to serve in his Cabinet. Gregg said that he could not be himself if he accepted the post. What that really means is that Gregg is too big of a NeoCon yahoo to drop the partisan act and do what’s right for the country by serving in President Obama’s cabinet. Obama obviously felt Gregg would be enough of a regular guy to handle the pressure of working amongst the opposition but it appears that Gregg did not have as much confidence in his own ability as the President did.
Obama picked Gregg despite all of the signs that pointed to the disaster of defending a sorry-ass record on Commerce Department issues. The biggest of these was the vote against keeping a Commerce Department in the first place. The irony was de-lish in the picking of Gregg as the new secretary. Then there were problems in accepting a conservative in charge of the Census in 2010 and all of the ramifications of undercounting minorities that the Census regularly gets accused of. Did you think for a second that a conservative republican was going to go that extra mile to make sure all those folks were accurately counted especially given how they usually vote? I don’t think so.
Gregg cited a number of other issues that he could not overlook in accepting President Obama’s invitation to become the new Commerce Secretary so he withdrew. Bailed. Quit before he started. Pussed out. If this is what passes for trying to be bipartisan on the GOP side, they are failing miserably. No wonder. They simply are not interested in governing with input from all sides. The people want the partisan bickering to stop but today’s GOP isn’t interested in what the public wants. They are only interested in preserving their unity, following Rush’s marching orders, and hoping that Obama fails as president so they can point fingers and say, “See? Told you so.”
Thankfully, there are adequate numbers of House Democrats running the House so if republicans want to sleep in Siberia, they can with no problems. The issue on the Senate side is a bit trickier where Senate republicans push every vote to the filibuster proof majority of 60 votes. I, far one, want the NeoCons up there in the Senate to live with conducting a filibuster. A real live filibuster on CSPAN, not a paper threat like they have now. Harry Reid should grow a pair and force the republicans to actually conduct a filibuster on an important issue. Health care is coming up. So is the Employee Fair Choice Act. Make them stand up there for hours on end and keep talking so the American people can see how small-minded, bitter, and useless this rump regional party truly is.
President Obama doesn’t want to push the GOP into that corner. Too bad. It’s what is needed to break the logjam of progressive legislation we all know is coming. Maybe the lessons of the Gregg nomination will resonate within the White House and the President will realize that he’s got an asskicking party ready to go to the mat for him. Democrats have been held in check for over two years now and after not getting the chance to impeach Bush and/or Cheney, they are itching for a fight. President Obama, please let the big dogs run before they forget how to bite. All it will take is one good mudhole stomping and we won’t hear bullshit like “tax cuts” or “smaller government” or “fiscal responsibility” coming out of their pieholes for quite a while afterwards.
Please. I’m asking you nicely.
Black & White and Cardinal Red All Over 