Bully Pulpit.

If Obama gets his ass on the road and hammers these obstructionists with his latest caucus win under his belt, he'll force the MSM to question the GOP'ers about such things as supporting legislative initatives and then ultimately voting against their own bills, calling out fabricated numbers etc. It will take, however, the pundits willingness to read the information they are questioning the GOP on and doing follow-up questions when the answer they receive from the GOP person is a lie. Unfortunately, that is never going to happen.

When FOX Noise realized their guys were taking a beating they chose to interrupt the exchange and bring out the "usual suspects" to initiate a hammering of Obama. Nauseating...

The "Party of No" label has stuck, and it hurts. Republicans are defensive about it -- they even bring it up themselves.

One therefore expects that Democrats will shy away from using it, and those that do will suffer attacks from other Democrats, which then will be joined by attacks from the Broder-bots for insufficient bipartisanship, leading to a loud intra-party squabble, with the final result being a series of media stories on Democratic incoherence, message failure, etc.

The reason that GOP decisionmakers are NOT worried about being tarred with the obstructionist label is because Democrats have not and will not make an issue of Republican obstructionism.

Republicans know that they can block everything--even stuff they proclaim to hold dear--and suffer no consequences. In fact, Republicans blocking all the fiscal-conservatism measures like the deficit commission and pay-go will be used by REPUBLICANS as campaign points. They won't mention that they blocked the measures: They'll just keep hammering on how Democrats spend, spend spend.

And Reid, Pelosi, and Obama will all run as fast and as frantically as possible farther and farther to the right to try to get some sort of bipartisan agreement on anything.

Indeed, this week should have made this abundantly clear -- Republican obstructionism has reached the level at which they oppose ideas they support.

At the same time, they oppose ideas that they used to support.

Gingrich said he'd support cap-and-trade in 2007, but led the charge against it as an outrage in 2009.

Grassley said no one on earth would oppose a health insurance mandate in the summer of 2009, but by the end of the year, he was railing against that as tyranny.

Etc. etc.

It'd be much easier for liberals to argue with conservatives if the conservatives would stop arguing with themselves.

The Dems need to get on message and stick on message. No more Holy Joe and Bayh. Toss Lieberman first.

"..and they realize that the public may disapprove, but they're willing to take the risk."

When only 25% of Americans understand that 60 votes are required for cloture on filibusters, that is probably a safe risk for them. The Republicans swim in a sea of ignorance.

I think the party of NO is beginning to stick. By the way it will be a long time before the Republicans agree to another televised question period with Barack Obama. He cleaned their clocks.

Too bad Fox News had to break away for "breaking news" maybe my brother would realize that he has fallen pray to Faux propaganda. He keeps claiming that Obama has a far left agenda. The other day I ask him for proof, he muttered something about his foxy friends.

As I keep pointing out, the real prize for Republicans in 2010 is to save as much of the Bush tax cuts as they can. Being the party of NO means the wealth transfer engine is about to end. If they played ball with Obama on some issues important to Obama, they might save some of those tax cuts, but since they have elected to be the party of NO they have no real influence in the legislative process. As Obama pointed out the Republicans and their foxy friend have so demonized him with their base they can't afford to be seen doing business with him. This mess couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

Not so sure whether there's any interest among the Rs in historical precedents across the pond, but the one problem that plagues David Cameron and his Tories in the upcoming parlamentary elections in Britain, is whether enough centrist voters are comfortable with voting for the Tories despite their lingering reputation as the 'nasty party'. And that is more than a decade and a half after the founding mother of that reputation, Margret Thatcher, was forced from office.

At the moment large parts of the US electorate may indeed not be aware of the GOP strategy of obstruction, and that strategy may therefore continue to pay dividends short term. But once the 'Party of No' label sinks in, the stench of this perception will linger much longer than the Republicans may wish to imagine.

If the Republicans insist on the course they are on, they will break either the GOP, or, if the majority in Congress doesn't get its act together, they may break the Democrats.

One way or another though, the almost unavoidable victim is going to be the US political system as we've known it. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, but this 'we have to destroy the place in order to save it' approach is fraud with danger.

I've wondered if this could start to happen. The Party of NO has made a very bad move, because they've also insisted that they have proposed better policies. But when you start to look at them, as Obama said in his astonishing performance before the Repub House conference, the good ideas have been incorporated in the legislation, while a lot of the other stuff is campaign boilerplate without thinking it through -- and you can't expect to get the full loaf, you must compromise.

The Repub strategy has clearly been to cause discontent, in order to get control in the next election. But the President has just found a new strategy to make them put-up or shut-up BEFORE the next election. How can the Repubs avoid getting called-out on this? Will they refuse to say anything, altogether? Their support will shrivel down to the Palin wing.

Other than the freeze idiocy, I thought this was pretty good positioning by the Democrats for a change. The pay-go rules make extending Bush tax cuts nearly impossible and the commission would make people face some hard choices on taxes and spending with the Oregon experience not lost on the R's. The Republicans do a great job on messaging unless they are forced to put actual numbers on their proposals and then everything falls apart. The only part of the HCR fiasco that I liked was the way CBO scoring was given a high profile. Obama should have responded to Tom Price's stupidness by saying the CBO scored his reform bill and found it does nothing he claims it does.

The only thing left in the 2010 Republican campaign bag it the dizzying of the American electorate!

The anti-incumbent sentiment is merely one desired result of the Republican attempt to win back seats through swirling, emotional and nonsensical rhetoric targeting pre-existing prejudices!

The greatest hope for Republican candidates is some bad news getting a life of its own - what a deficit (economic, political and moral) they offer us American people! -Kevo

Why are the DemCons worried about the exact opposite? This worry, to the degree that it exists, can only be meaningful if Dems are wiling to present it as a difference to the electorate, not a reason to apologize to them.

And why have Republicans chosen to gamble with paralyzing the government when it backfired so spectacularly in 1995? Because back then there was no Fox news explaining to the American people that the President was the Antichrist and that the Republicans are blocking him for Jesus. In the right wing echo chamber today, being a wingnut means never having to say you're sorry.

The Republicans are playing chicken.

For eight years they did politics in a totally unsustainable way. They focused on winning the day, or winning the news cycle, and not anything that would make them look appealing or make sense in the long term. And it worked. For a while. In the sense that for six years or so, they did win the day. Except then it turned out you really *can't* fool all of the people all of the time, people started to catch on, and it all came crashing down.

But after that, instead of changing the strategy, the Republicans just doubled down. After 2008 they started going to even more dramatic lengths to win those news cycles, doing things that make them look worse and worse to anyone who is paying attention. They're hoping more unsustainable politics can pull them out of the consequences of playing unsustainable politics before. And for now, it's working. They keep winning those news cycles. People are so shocked and awed by the Republican nonsense that they aren't asking the question of whether it makes sense.

Thing is, this obviously won't last forever. And when it stops working, there will be consequences, just like there were when the Bush thing stopped working, only probably even worse because they don't have very far left to fall. The question is whether it will keep working long enough to work in the 2010 elections, and whether, if it does get them success in that one election, any long term damage will have been worth it from their perspecive.

How is the majority supposed to work with a minority that would rather destroy the political process than approve its own proposals? Why don't Obama and the Democrats realize that the Republicans, by their intransigence, have given the Democrats permission not to work with them? There is no need to try to compromise when the Republicans will reject everything. The Democrats can get rid of the filibuster and pass anything they want. The only reason that they won't is because they are Democrats.

It is not the Republicans that are monsters and neither are Democrats. A power hungry crook is a power hungry crook no matter what party. The Dems have controlled the Hill the past 3 years now and bad has gone to worse. Both sides need to move away from Party politics and listen to those that elected them and be the representative to the people that hired them. They were elected to serve us and not a Party or to line their own coffers.

What struck me in the Pence/Matthews clip in the post below this one is Pence's eagerness around the 1 minute mark to state something like: "we had the President, who is the leader of the Democratic party, say that Republican's have substantive ideas."

Why was Pence so eager to make this point? To ensure that we understand that the GOP has the Obama Substantive Ideas seal of approval? I can't help but think they are seeing something pretty ugly in the polls about their lack of engagement if that statement is one they are excited about making.

Team work is lacking. I move that those who don't do what is expected of them as reps. of this country, should be fired, fined, and have to pay back the equivalent of income vs days,weeks,moments in a week, of silence, unobtainable presence during sessions,votes,and the such.As well as, a nice big Audit/drug test. We the people do not get rewarded for noncooperative behaviour that is self-evident in Governing Practitioners:Time out doesn't include pay anymore!