The term bipartisanship is defined by this White House as GOP surrender. Turns out, it is as simple as that. Yesterday, President Obama made an unannounced visit to the White House press room and took over the briefing with reporters. As he jumped from the subjects of jobs creation, the floundering economic recovery and the ever present health care/insurance reform agenda, he also attempted to show sincerity in his rhetoric on a bipartisan approach to legislating his agenda. Now that he has essentially frittered away his first year in office and reading the dismal polling numbers on his approval ratings, President Obama is making a phony outreach to Republicans.
Can't we all just get along?
And, by get along, he means can't Republicans simply just surrender and go along with the Obama agenda? On Twitter, WH CBS Radio correspondent Mark Knoller tweeted that bipartisanship seems to mean GOP surrender. Knoller said in his tweet what the GOP has known all along. The fact is, Obama has no record as a politician who is interested in a bipartisan approach to governing or legislating. The nonsensical campaign he ran for the presidential election was just that, full of nonsense. The campaign has nothing to do with reality. Even the most loyal of Obama supporters are now realizing that.
As the Obama administration swept into Washington, it was all good times and happy, happy, joy, joy. The White House briefings were filled with lots of laughter and lots of Obama love. Now, one year into the President's four year term, times are changing. As reported in Politico:
http://www.politico.com/click/stories/1002/press_room_laughter_dies_down.html the laughter is fading. Maybe the White House press reporters are finally realizing what fools they were being taken for and now may start doing their jobs. Time will tell.
President Obama is fond of the technique of using straw men to bolster his speeches. His favorite is to claim that his critics - the GOP - simply want to "do nothing". He likes to claim that no alternative proposals, say, for health care/insurance reform, have been brought forward for him to consider. More untruths, to put it kindly. Even after the elections recently, Obama remains deaf and in denial. His agenda is not welcomed by the majority of Americans and yet he has no intention of ratcheting it back. So be it.
As he was 'reaching out' in his token way in the White House press room, just a short while later his Press Secretary Robert Gibbs decided to make another of his trademark surly jokes at the expense of someone else. His target was Sarah Palin, now a private citizen. From the podium he showed his version of hand written notes on the palm of his hand. Hilarious, no? Even his buddies in the press groaned loudly and moved on to the business at hand. And, in an article written by Michael Gerson in The Washington Post, we learn of an attack to Rep Paul Ryan and his plan for a balanced budget originating from the Democratic National Committee just days after Obama singled out Ryan in his televised visit to the GOP gathering in Maryland. Even the CBO concluded that Ryan's approach to the budget does, indeed, achieve a balanced budget. But, since Ryan is likable and a rising star in the GOP, he must be shut down by the 'post partisan' President Obama.
Jennifer Rubin writes about it and of a slush fund discovered to discredit the Tea Party movement by funneling money from online contributions to offices of a "prominent Democratic party lawyer"- http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blog/index.php/rubin/234631
The truth is that the GOP members of the House and Senate have produced alternatives to the Obama agenda. The response has been to be ignored and shut out by the one party control of Congress. Here is the latest on health care/insurance reform that would find bipartisan agreement:
http://on.wsj.com/bA7tNg
Unfortunately, President Obama again stated firmly yesterday that he had no intention of starting over. For him, bipartisanship is solely defined as GOP surrender.
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