… Obama is expected to attend Republican caucus meetings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Whether there’s movement on either or both sides after that should be telling. As Laura Litvan writes for Bloomberg: "President Barack Obama proved he could win over Republican voters. Now he’s trying to show he can do the same with the party’s lawmakers…
"Obama’s decision to go to the Capitol to meet with the opposing party just days after his inauguration is unusual. Bush met only twice in eight years with House Democrats, and only at retreats outside Washington."
So far, however, the response has not been effusive.
Peter Wallsten writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Republicans signaled Sunday that they would not be daunted by President Obama’s soaring approval ratings, criticizing his proposed $825-billion economic stimulus plan, his strategy for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and his decision to exempt a top-ranking Pentagon appointee from new ethics rules.
"Some of the sharpest criticism came from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the party’s challenger to Obama in the election and the recipient of aggressive outreach as part of the new president’s efforts to forge an image of bipartisanship… "But Sunday, McCain had few kind words for Obama’s initial moves as president. "[T]he senator said he would not support the stimulus plan in its current form, asserting that it should have more tax cuts and less emphasis on projects, such as repairing the National Mall or extending broadband access to rural areas"…
"’Right now, given the concerns that we have over the size of this package and all of the spending in this package, we don’t think it’s going to work,’ the House minority leader, John Boehner, said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ ‘And so, if it’s the plan that I see today, put me down in the "no" column’"…
I believe they are poised to cast him as a "typical Democrat big-spender" – an old standard Republican trick that has always worked in the past. Obama is anything but that. He is trying to prepare for the desparate straits that lie ahead for the American economy – straits at least partially caused by the Bush Adninistration’s ignoring our economy just like the ignored the warnings about 9/11.
I’ve been thinking about this some because of a cartoon in our weekly newspapar. This county in North Georgia has been Republican since the Civil War like many in mountainous Appalachia. It is 98% White and voted for McCain 5:1. The only times it went for Democrats were FDR’s third term and Carter’s first term. I think the paper’s cartoons are from some syndicated service. This one surprised me though:
It’s the old quaisi-racist government handouts/welfare Talking Point. And is this "big spender"/tax-cuts instead of government spending business a Republican Party-wide Talking Point? The answer is easily found by visiting the Republican Talking Point Central web site of Rush Limbaugh:
Republicans were infuriated that Clinton beat the first Bush and they did everything to bring him down. At the time the country was prospering and Clinton was lowering the national debt. I would tell my husband that the difference between Democrats and Repubicans, Republicans will try to bring down a Democratic Administration because they can’t stand not being in control no matter how the country is doing and Democrats will go along with almost any Administration as long as the country is doing well. I know that is more than a little niave but that is how I felt after the Clinton presidency.
It does look like the early Clinton days, doesn’t it?