Richard Fernandez:
Despite the fact that the Democrats are reported to have lost the 2014 mid-term elections, the papers are almost give the impression it was the Republicans who lost. ”How the Tea Party lost the 2014 midterms,” says Jon Terbush in the Week [1]. ”The Tea Party has completely…ruined the Republican Party,” according to author Jon Huntsman [2].
But even if the Republicans have dared to win this time they will be punished for their insolence soon. Alex Seitz-Wald at MSNBC [3] says that for the true believers “2016 starts now”. David Schanzer and Jay Sullivan argued in the New York Times [4] shortly before the polls began that it would be better to cancel the mid-terms, which are an anachronism. “The main impact of the midterm election in the modern era has been to weaken the president, the only government official (other than the powerless vice president) elected by the entire nation.”
Brian Beutler at the New Republic [5] says the 2014 takeaway for for Obama is ‘no more Mr. Nice Guy’.
Citing administration officials, Politico reports that “Obama’s political and policy teams are planning a big counterattack if the Republicans win the Senate—introducing a slate of legislative proposals and executive actions on immigration, infrastructure and early childhood education that are popular with the Democratic base and that he will dare the GOP to oppose.”
But now that those pesky, useless elections have happened, then fire the Parthian Shot [6]. That’s pretty much what Katrina vanden Heuvel [7] is urging the president to do. “The Democrats Lost Big Tonight. Why Obama Should Double Down”. Here’s what she says:
The president should go big right now, undertaking a quick series of high-profile executive actions on issues that the Republican House has not acted upon, and will never pass. President Obama should be very visible, with photo ops and speeches and social media and grassroots backup and appearances on Between Two Ferns, moving hard and fast from one executive action to the next….
Start with serious immigration reform…
Cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline …
Meet with China and India on climate issues …
Host a national teach-in …
Go up to the edge of normalizing relations with Cuba …
Nominate a diverse set of progressives to fill every judicial vacancy at every level
Maybe the better term is Scorched Earth [8]: “a military strategy which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area.” Nuke America from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. The mid-terms must have been a giant conspiracy, not a defeat. Peter Baker of the New York Times [9] reports the administration believes that if only the local candidates hadn’t held the president back, he would have swept the field:
But that was not the way Mr. Obama saw it. The electoral map was stacked against him, he argued, making Democrats underdogs from the start. And his own party kept him off the trail, meaning he never really got the chance to make his case. “You’re in the Final Four,” as one aide put it, “and you’re on the bench with a walking boot and you don’t get to play.”
Never mind. The Guardian [10] believes that even with the Republicans able to obstruct domestic policy, there’s still time for Obama to change the world. “Obama set to focus rest of term on foreign policy after elections setback.”
These same leftist Bozos are trying to tell Republicans that, having won control of both houses, that it is now the Republican’s responsibility to reach across the aisle and compromise with Democrats. When in the last 6 years have these sanctimonious *ss-w*pes ever told Harry Reid, Obama or the Democrats that they had to reach across the aisle and try to compromise with Republicans in the minority?
FA’s resident leftist paid troll lying and/or idiot bozos (Greg, John, This one, Ronald, and George Wells, etc, etc) will probably continue to spew their Progressive Democrat propaganda in here. However, I’m going to say that we must now, more than ever, stop responding to these stupidly dishonest “something for nothing” Progressive Dem parasite promoters.
Now is the time for us to spend our efforts in pressuring Congress to halt Ebola 0Muslim’s tyranny. Wasting our time by allowing ourselves to be “trolled” by these asinine idiot liars is counter productive to what we really need to do right now; and that is to “handcuff” oMuslim and, and the same time, do everything we possibly can to hamstring Hillary’s Presidential run. There can be no compromise or “reaching over the aisle” about this on our part.
Scorched earth is an excellent characterization of some of the recommended paths for the President in the face of abject rejection. Even before I read the writer’s reference to it, I had an image of Hitler in his Berlin bunker in April, 1945 deciding to destroy all of the German infrastructure because the German people had proven themselves unworthy of his being. The people making these recommendations are the one’s Janet Napolitano should have been watching instead of returning veterans.
Perhaps if Obama had focused anything at all on foreign policy, he would not have suffered such a setback. Or domestic policy, for that matter.
Obama promised that he would not allow a nuclear Iran; how did that rhetoric (and that is all it was) differ from Bush’s approach? Again, Obama had done NOTHING which has only resulted in catastrophe across a broad spectrum.