Obama appeared on Fox and the far left is upset he didn’t take them on but rather was quite accommodating.
The interview itself brought forth a few nuggets especially this head scratcher:
WALLACE: But, Senator, if I may, I think one of the concerns that some people have is that you talk a good game about, let’s be post-partisan, let’s all come together — just a couple of quick things, and I don’t really want you to defend each one, I just want to speak to the larger issue.
The gang of 14, which was a group — a bipartisan coalition to try to resolve the nomination — the issue of judicial nominations. Fourteen senators came together, you weren’t part of it. On some issues where Democrats have moved to the center, partial-birth abortion, Defense of Marriage Act, you stay on the left and you are against both.
And so people say, do you really want a partnership with Republicans or do you really want unconditional surrender from them?
OBAMA: No, look, I think this is fair. I would point out, though, for example, that when I voted for a tort reform measure that was fiercely opposed by the trial lawyers, I got attacked pretty hard from the left.
During the Roberts –
WALLACE: John Roberts, Supreme Court.
OBAMA: John Roberts nomination, although I voted against him, I strongly defended some of my colleagues who had voted for him on the Daily Kos, and was fiercely attacked as somebody who is, you know, caving in to Republicans on these fights.
In fact, there are a lot of liberal commentators who think I’m too accommodating. So here is my philosophy. I want to do what works for the American people. And both at the state legislative level and at the federal legislative level, I have always been able to work together with Republicans to find compromise and to find common ground.
So he did NOT vote for the confirmation of Roberts but he did defend those who did vote FOR him.
This is bipartisanship in Obama’s world.
As for the Tort Reform stuff Ted Frank at PointofLaw.com isn’t convinced that Obama is willing to cross the aisle on this one:
So Obama may have annoyed the lunatic left with his vote for CAFA. As a reform supporter, I’m far from convinced that this makes him someone willing to cross the plaintiffs’ bar. Eighteen other Democrats also voted for CAFA. CAFA would have passed the previous Congress, except for its unfortunate timing arising just as Edwards had been named the vice-presidential nominee; Democrats fell into line and filibustered the bill to avoid having a civil justice reform pass at the same time, which might remind people of Edwards’s unsavory means of acquiring his fortune on the backs of pregnant mothers and obstetricians. Obama didn’t participate in the negotiations to get Democratic support, and he voted for every Democratic attempt to eviscerate the bill with amendments (Vote Record Numbers 5 through 8, February 9, 2005). Obama didn’t break with the Democrats on any seriously contested tort reform measures: he filibustered medical malpractice reform, and was one of the votes to kill the asbestos reform bill (which effectively failed by one vote). (I was not a great fan of the flawed asbestos reform bill, either, but Obama’s opposition does not seem to have been based on the grounds that the bill did not go far enough to rein in abusive litigation.) Obama claimed to support medical malpractice reform in his Senate campaign (or, at least, made pro-reform swing voters think that he did), but, then, so did Kerry and Edwards in their 2004 presidential campaign.
Obama co-sponsored the MEDiC bill with Hillary Clinton; it was a federally-funded variation of the so-called “Sorry Works” proposal that the plaintiffs’ bar has elsewhere proposed as an alternative to medical malpractice reform. Data is limited on the question of whether this would be an effective reform on either the question of liability expense or patient safety (much less taxpayer expense), but, so long as state governments are deadlocked on issues of substantive reform, a pilot program such as MEDiC may be worth trying, as its success or failure would provide answers on the legitimacy of measures such as caps. But it’s hardly the move of someone daring to flout the trial lawyers who dominate the Democratic Party these days.
Nope…Obama is going to have to do better then those examples to portray himself as a bipartisan candidate. Problem is, he has no other example….hell, his entire legislative record is pretty small:
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