Showing posts with label Budget Deal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Budget Deal. Show all posts

Thursday, January 16, 2014

President Obama pitches home run for Republicans

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The same week Obama gets a second major budget initiative bill from a bi-partisan Congress thanks to the tireless efforts of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray which provides a year of Congressional stability and avoids government shutdowns and other nonsense, Obama takes the bully pulpit once again.
 
 
Obama is quite the dichotomy, or is it trichotomy?  There is the ethereal, detached professor who lectures America as if we are stuck in stupid.  There is the frustrated and hypocritical Nobel Peace Prize winner still trying to end war five years after winning the coveted prize.  And there is the Chicago back room politician who seems to have forgotten thugs stopped being in vogue back in Richard Daley days.
 
 
No one in America should be more aware of the paralyzing effects of bitter partisan politics than Barack Obama.  Every year since elected he has invoked the finger pointing threat of condemning Congress for failing to say yes to everything he wants.  Then he moans and groans about the need for bi-partisan cooperation because he can't get what he wants.
 
 
Now, after five years of intellectual and Congressional constipation when Congress finally does start working together which Barack Obama shows his face, the same old Chicago thug from five years ago who basically said to Hell with Congress and the people, I'm going to use executive powers to do what I want!
 
At times it seems our president is more concerned with his legacy than his performance in office.  At times it seems he is resigned to doing nothing with Congress or the Supreme Court when the Constitution defines a clear role for all three branches of government.  Kind of makes you wonder what they taught him in his Constitutional Law courses at Harvard.
 

 
Be that as it may, did he also forget this is an election year?  A swing of just six Senate seats from Democrat to Republican would give the GOP control of both the House and Senate for the last two years of the Obama presidency.  If he thinks things have been tough so far, imagine what would happen if he lost control of the Senate.
 

 
Thanks to ObamaCare four Senate Democrats up for re-election have already said they will resign.  Senators don't resign without reason and there is no better reason than to think you can't win.  If such is the case, the GOP needs only two more seats to take control for the next two years.
 
 
So why does Obama condemn Congress and the GOP when they are working together for the first time in five years?  That is the home run ball he served up to the Republicans.  It also may be the lingering failure to get over politics Chicago style and a continuing failure to realize what worked in Chicago all those years ago is not relevant to the modern day and present needs.
 
 
His mastery of the teleprompter and triumphant speeches long ago lost their luster to the American people who are still trying to recover from an economic collapse caused by greed and prolonged by partisan bickering.  No matter how smooth you may be as a politician, eventually the people expect results.
 
No president has ever been successful because they were a partisan bully.  No president has ever been successful by condemning the two branches of government our Founding Fathers felt could protect us from an abuse of power and anarchy, the Legislative and Executive branches.
 
 
It just seems that Obama has never understood his is not an Imperial presidency but a democratic election to office by barely 50% of the vote.  Yet once elected, he is the president for all the people, not just those who like him.  Serving all the people all the time seems foreign to the Obama administration and that is a sad truth to ponder.
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