Flaylo
Handsome Devil
Marge Baker: When the 'One-Term President' Strategy Fails
I think the Repugs are just all talk, they will budge because the far right stance cannot be held onto.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in an astoundingly telling moment halfway through President Obama's first term, told a reporter what had been the guiding strategy of Republicans in Congress. "The single most important thing we want to achieve," McConnell said, "is for President Obama to be a one-term president." They figured that if they refused to cooperate on anything, they could later tell voters that the president hadn't accomplished anything and that he had failed to reach across the aisle. McConnell and his caucus dove into that project hook, line and sinker, threatening to destroy the nation's economy by not raising the debt limit, blocking jobs legislation, eschewing compromise on the Bush tax cuts, refusing to staff the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or the National Labor Relations Board, and blocking even uncontroversial federal judicial nominees.
The "one-term president" strategy created plenty of gridlock, set back the country's economic recovery and resulted in a historic vacancy crisis in the federal courts. The one thing it did not achieve was a one-term presidency.
Now, as McConnell and his House counterpart, Speaker John Boehner, get back to work after President Obama's reelection I hope they realize that the strategy of scorched-earth obstruction causes far more real harm than political good. But the signs aren't looking so good. Just hours after the presidential election was called for President Obama, Boehner was vowing that he would never compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy, even to avert an explosion of the deficit. McConnell chimed in, denying that the president -- who won a greater margin in the electoral and popular vote than George W. Bush did in 2000 or 2004 -- has any sort of mandate from the majority that elected him. If McConnell and Boehner go forward with their obstruction-at-all-costs plan, President Obama, Congressional Democrats and progressives across the country will have to make sure it's not worth their while.
I think the Repugs are just all talk, they will budge because the far right stance cannot be held onto.