Originally posted by Linnea - in another thread
I agree with Obama that he is a 'post partisan' leader - which actually accounts for his failures, not his successes. He was completely naive in his assessment that we live in a post-partisan world.
Originally posted by Kaz, in response - in another thread
I could not disagree with you more Linnea. Barack Obama has utterly failed to bring America, and our political leaders together. I think you would be very hard pressed to show examples of his efforts in this arena - efforts that demonstrate him to be a leader determined to bring people together no matter the circumstance. For example, a post-partisan leader doesn't get on national television to talk about his health-care plan in terms of an evil "red pill" vs. a new miracle drug "blue pill". Most people saw through that garbage - and they certainly weren't the words of a post-partisan leader.
This type of behavior goes back to one of his very first policy meetings with Republicans. When presented with Republican ideas about the stimulus package, which he dismissed out of hand, he uttered these incredibly arrogant words: "Elections have consequences. I won".
No, those are not the words of a post-partisan President. They are the words of a leader with a super-majority who has just misread his mandate and forgotten the words that got him elected. Immediately thereafter, he began to delegate massive pieces of his agenda to the rabidly partisan House of Representatives. He is not a stupid man of course, he knew full well how the House operated, and that this was going to get incredibly partisan moving forward - and when it did, he sat by and let his party rip in to the racist, dumb Americans who were to stupid to realize that Democrats knew what was best for them.
Finally, his words, and the words he tolerated as the leader of his party during this election cycle hammer the nails in the coffin of his "post-partisan" claims. He and his party spoke of "enemies", "extremists", "racists", "stupid people", "scared people", etc.......
Gone were the days of his United States vs. Blue and Red states speech. Frankly, a LOT of the rhetoric used by Democrats to describe Americans who disagreed with them was of a quality more suited to the talk radio format they so despise.
Well, guess what? He and his party just got their ass handed to them by a bunch of moron, redneck, racist, frightened, extremist, "enemies" - AKA the majority of voting Americans in 2010.
That's right, based upon the "post-partisan" rhetoric Barack Obama and the Democrats have been using this past year, they were just taken down by a bunch of crazy redneck hicks (their insinuations, not mine) - mostly because their spoiled brat, drug addicted, mental patient base (again, their insinuations, not mine) have realized this guy is not an actual representative of the base, and that their adopted party is just as corrupt as the other one is.
It truly is a shame that the President, and leaders of the Democratic party lost sight of the fact that with control of the entire government, they represented ALL Americans - not just the ones who agreed with them, and supported their every decision.
The American people have just put in place a check & balance to the incredibly arrogant partisan rule of the Democractic party in America.
In my opinion, Americans are not as stupid as Democrats have liked to portray them this past year. I think Americans are fully aware of the fact that they just divided government by putting in place an equally partisan group in control of the House. If either group wants to be successful, they are going to have to work together now - or the electorate will likely do it again in two years.
I stick with my original assessment of Obama. His style of leadership led to his downfall as he attempted for months and months to negotiate with Republicans who acted from the very beginning in bad faith. We got a crappy HCR due to this dithering, and the economic stimulus bills were also gutted to the point of being ineffective.
If the midterm election was a repudiation of Obama - it was for these reasons.
The American people have just put in place a check & balance to the incredibly arrogant partisan rule of the Democractic party in America.
Case in point - have you listened to the Republican leaders today? That's arrogance.
And what is Obama seeming to do? Capitulating, again.