How is Obama going to handle the Republicans who are virtually unanimously out to destroy him? As Paul Krugman relates, his recent words and actions are not a good sign. I hope this changes very soon.
Mr. Obama’s [freezing federal workers'] pay ploy might, just might, have been justified if he had used the announcement of a freeze as an occasion to take a strong stand against Republican demands — to declare that at a time when deficits are an important issue, tax breaks for the wealthiest aren’t acceptable.
But he didn’t. Instead, he apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. At that meeting, Mr. Obama, who has faced two years of complete scorched-earth opposition, declared that he had failed to reach out sufficiently to his implacable enemies. He did not, as far as anyone knows, wear a sign on his back saying “Kick me,” although he might as well have.
I do remember that there were times in 1995 after the last Republican takeover during a Democratic administration when I was about completely fed up with Bill Clinton. His signing of the salvage logging rider, suspending environmental laws to permit accelerated logging in U.S. National Forests, was almost the last straw for me. Fortunately Clinton realized his mistakes and turned things around in time.
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