This is exhausting. :(
Let the Bad Times Roll
I listened to John Boehner’s victory speech. The best I could tell from our next Speaker of the House is that the Republicans stand for small government, cuts in government deficit spending, and “accountability” in government. The last part I can understand; the Republicans are going to initiate endless investigations into Barack Obama, his wife, the cabinet members, and any federal government minion who captures their eye as a potential scandal target. This will be part of their publicly stated campaign pledge to destroy Barack Obama and ensure he is a one term President – this being about the only thing the Republicans have admitted to in the past 30 years that hasn’t been hypocritical or disingenuous. They really are determined to kill off Obama’s career as a politician and end his presidency in disgrace.
Bill and Hillary will have had it easy in comparison to the treatment in store for Barack Obama. Republican hatred for the man is boundless. It was bizarre listening tonight to Darrell Issa, R-California, state that the Obama administration has been a cesspool of scandal and that his treatment of the Republicans the past two years – “It’s my way or the highway” was Issa’s description of the Obama approach – is going to have to change if Obama expects to accomplish anything. This is Barack “Mr. Bipartisanship” Obama they are talking about, a man who burned a lot of bridges in the Democratic Party with his fawning deference to Republican politicians during his effort to pass health care legislation. After wasting a year on conciliatory if not obsequious courtship of Republicans and compromising endlessly on his legislative goals, not one Republican bothered to vote for the final bill.
These people have been single-minded in their goal of extracting what they can from Barack Obama and not conceding him a political inch. They’ve spent two years trashing his legislative accomplishments, such as they are, and convincing the public that Obama’s “socialism” and big spending, liberal policies are why the economy is in the tank. Barack Obama has been depressingly complicit in this effort, not willing to fight back until the last moment of the campaign, and preferring to spend his time attacking liberals and the unions in his own party a month before the mid-term elections.
We now have over 50 new Republican politicians strutting around Capitol Hill eager to do whatever will damage the Obama administration and the President himself, even if that means driving the economy further into the ditch that George Bush created. For two years their strategy of saying No to anything Obama proposed produced political dividends for the Republicans, culminating in their control now of the House, so we have to assume they have no reason or incentive to act responsibly when irresponsibility has been so rewarding.more...
http://agonist.org/numerian/20101103/let_the_bad_times_roll
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