Obama Hails Legislative Victories in Lame Duck Session

As I have previously written, those of us who watch the President Obama's personality driven presidency would bet that he took a victory lap before winging off to Hawaii for the holiday.

He did.

During a press conference on Wednesday, the President was all too eager to speak of the 'historic' lame duck session concluding on Capitol Hill. According to Obama and his team, everything is 'historic' about this administration's victories. It's pathetic tunnel vision and a show of a sad lack of historic awareness of our country's history, but this is the administration we have now. Not a single legislative victory would have been accomplished without the cooperation of the GOP. At any time, Senate Majority Leader McConnell could have brought it to a screeching halt. Instead, the GOP demanded a place at the bargaining table as the bills were hammered out. Common sense was brought into the insanely out of control spending demanded by Democrats and common ground was found.

The message was definitely not one of a desire for both parties to work together, Mr. President.

The Democrats are in deep denial as a coping mechanism over the November election results. The Democrats lost big - that was the true 'historic' lead into the lame duck session. The 'historic' gains were not legislative victories for Democrats but of the loss of Democratic seats in Congress. The talking points are that the American voter wants everyone to work together - which is a way of Team Obama claiming that Americans want the GOP to roll over for the Obama agenda. Not true by any measure.

"Nov. 2 wasn't about working with the president," Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, new chairman of the influential and deeply conservative Republican Study Committee, told POLITICO Wednesday. "It's about stopping him."

It's the singular, not-on-my-watch determination of Jordan's wing of the GOP — bolstered by the coming influx of tea party Republicans in both chambers — that has many lawmakers convinced the deal-making lame-duck session will give way to a blood-feuding 112th Congress. Liberals are gearing up, too, ready to defend Obama when he takes up their causes and to treat him as a traitor when he embraces Republicans.

The slobbering press is working overtime to convince readers that the Obama lame duck session is the greatest ever in legislative victories. They do not, however, report that the Democrats are still in large majorities in both chambers of Congress and the lame duck session is the last opportunity to pass the far left's agenda. After the November 2'shellacking' it became apparent that the country is fed up and compromise is the new name of the game. Not the traditional compromise of GOP caving into Democrat demands, quite the contrary. It's a new day in Washington, D.C. for Team Obama.

Obama was eager to get to business long delayed for less important, less urgent matters. He chose to invest his energy in health care reform - not a crisis - over other issues. This has backfired.

Here is a definition:

The "lame duck" amendment is the popular name for the 20th amendment to the Constitution, ratified on February 6, 1933. It is designed to limit the time that elected officials can serve after the general election in November.

Some of the support Obama received in the lame duck session came from Republican lawmakers ousted from office. Is this any way to pass legislation - especially a nuclear treaty with Russia? If voters thought the performances of these lawmakers was good, they would not have lost their re-election bids.