Roy Blunt, the whining senator
Yael T. AbouhalkahU.S. Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri was pontificating the other day to the media that President Barack Obama needs to get off his high horse and start cooperating with Blunt and fellow Republicans.
Here’s his most laughable statement:
“How do you get anything done if you immediately start telling the other side that has to work with you, ‘I’m not going to work with you on this.’ Now what kind of start is that to a new administration?”
Gosh, yeah, what would happen if Republicans played that game and said they were going to do things their way, no matter what the Democratic president wanted?
Oh, wait, they did - in 2009 - right after Obama was elected. Read all about it here.
Of course, those were just members of Congress dictating their thoughts that they were going to make Obama a one-term president by opposing everything he wanted to do. (News flash for the GOP: You failed.)
But we haven’t had a president lately start off his second term by saying he was going to do things his way, right?
Let’s hear what George W. Bush had to say to the media after winning re-election in 2004:
“Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That’s what happened in the — after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I’ve earned capital in this election — and I’m going to spend it for what I told the people I’d spend it on, which is — you’ve heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.”
In other words, presidents who have won re-election have earned the right to talk big.
And when Obama has won re-election after the other side - Blunt and his fellow Republicans - have tried to destroy his policies and hold America’s economy hostage to their way of thinking, well, I can understand the president telling opponents he’s not really interested right now in extending an olive branch to them.
One more thing:
Blunt’s comments were supposed to be important comments on the state of the Obama administration because he’s not one of the kooky, ultra-conservative Republicans who almost always vote against the president’s wishes.
Except - Blunt’s votes (his record is here and here) show he pretty much lines exactly like that, voting against Obama’s stimulus package, voting against Obama’s health care reform and opposing other major Obama ideas.
Suzanne Conaway
4 months agoThe link to the article about the GOP caucus in 2008 is very interesting.
Too bad they didn’t know what they were doing. Or maybe, too good.
Mark Hastert
4 months agoPoliticians in general tend to rely on the voter’s short memory and willing acceptance of anything they say as gospel. They’re often right. Many pols & pundits couldn’t get through a paragraph if they were being fact checked.
Steve Alleman
Kansas City
4 months agoThe GOP congress failed in its mission to make Obama a one-term president. And how about Bush’s stated agenda for his second term? “Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.” He failed on every single one.
Matt Henry
4 months agoWhy can’t this guy write a piece without peppering it with unnecessary insults? I get it from all of us laypeople in the commentosphere but it seems so unprofessional and unnecessary. Grow up, YTA.
And Presidents who win but didn’t bring Congress along for the ride have to find a political middle ground, not act like a petulant child every time someone doesn’t want him to eat $50 cookies for every meal.
Remember how Bush’s ‘political capital’ thing worked out? He spent it on trying to reform SS and other entitlements before they became disasters. He said “why can’t we solve a problem before it becomes a crisis? (I paraphrase).” Any effort to make any changes was derailed by the professional left within six months. And look where we are now. Thanks a lot.
Bush failed in his second term mission because the ideologues on the left, despite the fact that they controlled only one house of congress, made it their mission to derail it. So let’s not pretend the Golden Boy is the most put-upon President in history. As I had said before, this type of commentary would be easier to take if the President had been anything other than an ideological sphinx who drives a partisan wedge between every group, class or race that he can think of.
Phil Cardarella
4 months agoIt is hilarious to hear anyone in the GOP whine that Obama won’t compromise.
Here are the facts: Darn near EVERYTHING Obama has pushed is a GOP idea! Obamacare is Romneycare is the conservative Heritage Foundation’s proposal made in response to Hillary’s ideas. It is not as sweeping as NIXON’S idea.
Cap and Trade? Totally a GOP alternative to regulation. After all, there is no idea more capitalist, is there? If you are more efficient, you get to sell credits to the less efficient?
Wants to seize your guns? What BS. REAGAN supported keeping AKs off the streets — and the rest of the Brady Bill!
Obama a socialist? Only if you do not own a dictionary or a history book. Heck, back before the GOP lost its mind, Obama would barely have been left enough to qualify as a GOP Moderate!
Mark Hastert
4 months ago“Why can’t this guy write a piece without peppering it with unnecessary insults?”
because if pundits weren’t provocative they’d be unemployed essayists.
Matt Henry
4 months agoPhil - all ideas that have been roundly studied and repudiated by the same people that you want to foist responsibility upon. And opposed to the lemmings of the left, we don’t have a Christ figure we have to follow and defend. I am perfectly content saying Reagan was wrong when he was, like allowing tax increases in exchange for spending cuts that never came. When are you gonna call out the Big O for breaking so many of his campaign “promises?”
Mark - what a load. Is George Will or Krauthammer or Kirsten Powers or E.J. Dionne able to make a living without throwing out an insult in every sentence? Please. This guy is Michael Savage without the audience or the book deals.