Do You Believe It Now?
This is for all of the people who have complained that liberals-progressives are too negative about Obama.
Via Sean Paul, Stephanie Vallejo of the Boston Globe noted from the CBS 60 Minutes interview that President Obama compares his health care plan to Romney’s
“We thought that if we shaped a bill that wasn’t that different from bills that had previously been introduced by Republicans, including a Republican Governor in Massachusetts who’s now running for President, that we would be able to find some common ground there,” said Obama. “And we just couldn’t.”
OK, now that Obama has told you that he introduced the Dole-Romney health care bill that was edited by a Wellpoint vice president, rather than a Democratic plan, do you see why people are angry. Again, you don’t work for Democratic candidates and provide them with majorities in both houses of Congress and the White House so they can pass Republican plans.
This wasn’t a compromise, this was a surrender, and the Republicans wouldn’t even accept the surrender.
7 comments
And for his next trick, Obama will confront Republican proposals for tax cuts (including cuts for the extremely wealthy) using his favorite political technique: abject surrender. I wonder how that man faces himself in the mirror every morning.
What surrender? Obama is a Republican in everything but name, like most of the other Democrats these days. And Obama’s not even a Rockefeller Republican. Sure, he isn’t a crazed Bircher… and he’s black. So? Like Bill Clinton, he’s basically just a social climbing bootlicker. There’s a reason why both of them sort of came out of nowhere to get the nomination. I’ve never understood why Obamabots & Clintonistas get so mystified. Don’t they know snake oil when they see it?
The Lame ,,, Duck Congress should just punt and tell the world that they aren’t going to do anything about the “Bush/Republican Tax Increase”. If they didn’t want the taxes to go up they could have made the cuts permanent when the Republican Congress and Republican President passed their bill. It’s the fiscally prudent thing to do.
PJ, Bill Clinton was a governor in a state, Arkansas, where compromise was the only way anything got done. He made no effort to hide what he believed or how he would govern. He triangulated in Arkansas and triangulated in Washington. Obama has been hiding his real intentions since he entered politics.
Jimmy Carter, another Southern governor, had to do the same thing, and being a centrist was the only way to be successful in Southern politics at the time.
Politics had already become totally polarized by the time that Obama began his political career, so the “bi-partisanship” was not even a possibility, and everyone knows it. It has all been a show, and at this point Obama doesn’t seem to be any more interested in being President than the Shrubbery was. They wanted the job, they just didn’t want to do anything after they got it.
Have to disagree about Clinton’s honesty, Bryan. I was following the ’92 campaign pretty closely because of the opening for health care reform and my first impression of him was very much”‘used car salesman”. It’s true that if one was paying attention, Clinton’s real nature was visible through all the smoke and mirrors. For instance, although everybody remembers heath care as one of Clinton’s big initiatives, he only jumped on that train at all after Jerry Brown started getting a lot of traction (Brown was a single-payer guy) and even during the primaries Clinton was only proposing watered down status quo plans like “Pay or Play”. His campaign persona, though, was carefully crafted to give the impression of a strong populist. Like Obama, his biggest selling point was that he would be a “Change Agent” (remember that slogan?). And like Obama, Clinton was actually a stalking horse for entrenched financial interests and a lot of Republican policies that might not have passed under a Reublican administration (NAFTA/GATT/WTO, Telecommunications Act, repeal of Glass-Steagal, AFDC, etc).
Carter was a disappointment. His plain talk about oil dependence was encouraging, but when his vaunted Energy Plan turned out to consist almost entirely of various tax breaks, it was pretty clear he wouldn’t rise much above business as usual… more for the “already have”s. The course we were on was apparent even before Reagan was elected.
As for Obama, yes he is even worse than Bill Clinton, but as with Clinton, much of that was visible even during the primaries. Although I had some small hope that Obama might rise to the office, I mostly lost interest after Edwards ditched. Perhaps Clinton started out as one of those “do well by doing good types” where Obama may have never been anything but “do well”. Regardless, both of them had been bought before they were ever nominated.
I agree with you that Obama seems very disinterested. That’s why I’m puzzled that so many are so intent on figuring out his secret master plan for his 2012 re-election. It isn’t clear to me that he even gives a damn. After all, he’s already “gotten over”. He and all his family are set for life, no matter what happens to the rest of us.
Did you mean to say “Limp… Duck Congress”, Bryan?
PJ, I ignore campaigns. I assume they are all a tissue of lies. I researched what Clinton did in Arkansas, not what he said on the campaign trail, the same with Carter. They were both centerists, and both made deals to keep things moving. I wasn’t surprised by what they did because it was totally in line with what they had done before.
That’s the same way I approached Obama, and why he was off my short list early on. Everything he actually voted on was definitely right of center, and he avoided voting on a number of important issues in Illinois to avoid leaving a record.
I don’t accept “road to Damascus” moments from politicians and don’t believe anything used in a political ad.
I wasn’t thrilled by Bill Clinton, but he didn’t change after he won the Presidency, he acted just like he had in Arkansas. I have always assumed that the entire health care episode was Hillary, not Bill.
Oh, Jimmy added a few sticks to the mix, like the windfall profits tax, but he was looking for gradual change over a significant time frame. He wasn’t one for immediate radical action. He was and is a very cautious man not given to sudden action.
Well, they are limp as well as lame. It’s hard to fine enough vertebrae in the entire Democratic caucus to make a single spine.