Amen. Obama needs to keep saying this at least as often as the Republicans are saying anything. It has to penetrate Americans' minds finally.

Roll Call reports today that presidential remarks like these hurt Republicans' feelings.

Poor dears, their feelings are hurt. Someone give Ryan, Hatch et al some warm milk + cookies and then send them to bed, so that the grown-ups can get on with the business of actually running the country. And, you know, repairing it from the damage done by the children from 2001-09.

I apologize for any insult to children contained above.

-Z

Could we stop taking statements like these from the GOP seriously? They have no intention of working with Obama under any circumstances, and any action or lack of action by him will be spun to justify that stance. Arguments about tone or offsetting emergency spending or any of the rest of it are decoys. They are simply going to oppose everything the administration proposes, even when it's their own idea.

I continue to be convinced that if Obama proposed making Christianity the state religion tomorrow, by Saturday noon Hatch and McConnell and James Dobson would all have announced their conversion to Buddhism.

It's actually WORSE than that. Obama wouldn't have any right to complain if these people were actually willing to work with him. And their entire complaint against Obama is that he's only willing to work with them if they actually work with him.

But because they refuse to work with him, he tells everyone that they're not willing to work with him, and they use that as the excuse for why they can't work with him. And the solution for them would be for them to actually ACCEPT his invitation to work with him, and then he could stop telling people they're not working with him, and the whole problem would go away.

They're like bullies who insist that they're bullies because people keep tattling on them whenever they bully people; and use that as the excuse for why they need to keep bullying everyone.

Okay, I traditionally enjoy the Washington Monthly blog and Steve's work, but why does it seem that half of the posts for the past two years are "Republicans are lying, disingenuous dolts. Oh heavens, why won't they ever change?"

I mean, Jesus. Come on. We know this already. Why keep fretting over it?

I continue to be convinced that if Obama proposed making Christianity the state religion tomorrow, by Saturday noon Hatch and McConnell and James Dobson would all have announced their conversion to Buddhism.

Buddhism, huh?

I guess the timing matters, because due to Shabbat, they couldn't convert to Orthodox Judaism that fast.

The problem is that having Steve point out how silly this is is pointless. Someone in the actual MSM needs to point out the GOP hypocracy, but they just won't do it.

They'll jusrt dutifully report that Obama's meanness has upset those poor powerless Republicans.

Republicans:
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names, well, names, oh names, they just destroy me and make me want to weep bitter partisan tears... Please, please, don't call me names. I can't take it! I hate you! I HATE YOU!! Leave MEEEEE ALOOOOOOOOONE!
Get the fainting couch ready...

I love how Republicans have turned the Senate into a golf tournament, where, somehow a score of 38 beats a score of 58.

Keep calling them out Obama.
MORE! MORE!! MORE!!!
Republicans, how do you like it,
How do you like it?
MORE! MORE!! MORE!!!

This is way worse than children. We don't give children life-and-death power over millions of their fellow citizens. But the republicans are complaining, nay, boasting that they just have to keep millions of people out of work longer, let thousands die eminently preventable deaths, because someone isn't being polite to them. My five-year-old is better than that.

Which came first, The Chicken or the egg. Thats the msm idea.

Since when do Orrin Hatch and Paul Ryan fit into this category:

"many of his most likely GOP allies"

or this one:

"House Republicans whom the White House has previously looked to for bipartisan help"

November, Libs.

November.

November, Libs.

November.
Posted by: Patrick from Anoka

And then what Patrick? Assuming you manage to win - what will you do. I literally have no idea what a Republican wants except control and richer rich people.

And since they did so well crashing the banks, employment, mortgage industry, stock market, etc. - is that what you WANT?

Apparently, it is in fact what Republicans want. I have no reason to think otherwise.

Obama should fart in their general direction.

November, Libs.

November.
Posted by: Patrick from Anoka

And then what Patrick? Assuming you manage to win - what will you do. I literally have no idea what a Republican wants except control and richer rich people.

And since they did so well crashing the banks, employment, mortgage industry, stock market, etc. - is that what you WANT?

Apparently, it is in fact what Republicans want. I have no reason to think otherwise.

Steve Benen said:

They can root for his failure; they can oppose every proposal; they can stoke the fires of hate and paranoia; they can engage in truly scandalous legislative obstruction on a scale unseen in American history; they can even lie uncontrollably throughout key policy debates.
-------------------------------------------

This is classic IOIYAR It's Okay If You're A Republican.

WWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Oh, and what drkrick said.

Couple days ago, Drudge had a headline saying Biden calls GOP Nazis. The article was about a fund raising letter in which the VP said that in the next few months, Dems would be hit with a blitzkrieg like attack.

Patrick from Anoka, this is neither the time nor the place to work out your frustrations over having a small penis.

This is painfully silly.

Actually, it's the foundation of Republican strategy and has been since at least Nixon: attack and provoke at every opportunity, and when counterattacked, play the victim. The only thing more disturbing is that it works.

Obama: "So now we've got a choice"

Awesome. That's David Plouffe in action, right there - he is the one ordering all Democratic leaders to present November as a choice, not a referendum.

Too freakin' bad! This is how they roll. Create a scenario, get whacked by the Dems, vote against the scenario and say it's because Obama doesn't do bipartisanship. Crooks and liars. And when Obama DOESN'T call them out, he hiding. They are true aholes. We have no more TIME to wait for the babies to grow up.

Sure Obama SAID all that stuff, but does he REALLY REALLY MEAN it??? Name one time that he actually walked up to McConnell or Boehner and punched them in the face!! You can't, can you?!? Obama is SUCH a WIMP! Won't even get his knuckles bloody for a good cause!

It is indeed an abomination that Obama criticized republicans for obstructing desperately needed legislation.

Because he should have dispatched Special Ops to round them up and dump them in Guantanamo for a few months of enhanced interrogation.

I mean, Jesus. Come on. We know this already. Why keep fretting over it?

Because the major media outlets -- CNN, MSNBC, etc. -- are giving the opposite message. They're putting the Republicans on the air to publicly whine about how meeeeaaaannnn Obama is to them. And if we don't have any pushback from the left, that means that the Republicans win.

People kept saying in the 1990s that if we just ignored the whining of the Republicans, they would shut up. Turns out, that's not actually how it works.

"what congressional Republicans are saying here. They can root for his failure; they can oppose every proposal; they can stoke the fires of hate and paranoia; they can engage in truly scandalous legislative obstruction on a scale unseen in American history; they can even lie uncontrollably throughout key policy debates."

And any actual progressive that's been paying attention has known that that's what Republicans have been doing for decades.

And yet Obama didn't 'discover' this until just the last 18 months?

Obama "appeared to be in campaign mode. Apparently annoyed by 18 months of Republican nonsense...."

Actual progressives have been "annoyed" with Republican nonsense most of their lives, the last 30 years being excruciatingly 'annoying' as the Republicans have adopted increasingly insane policies.

Perhaps had Obama stayed in 'campaign mode' we might be significantly better off.

Instead, Obama's craven need to appease the right-wing has alienated a significant chunk of the left-wing and even worse, systematically crippled Obama's Presidency and even the country.

Obama needed to be in 'campaign mode' in January of 2009 to push for a stronger stimulus, push for strong financial regulations, push for criminal penalties for torturers and banksters, push for a stronger government that can regulate dirty-energy cartels to minimize coal mining and oil disasters, push for clean energy and climate change regulation, push for an actual liberal health care plan (instead of the Republican's predatory Corporate insurance plan he sold US)....

But instead Obama has used nearly every opportunity given him to appease right-wingers by adopting and pushing their proposals, spouting their insane right-wing ideology, and promoting right-wing ideologues.

The country didn't need a Republican-lite politician who only 'wakes up' during election years.

The country needed (needs) an actual progressive President who wasn't subservient to predatory Corporations and Big-money.

Obama apologists have done US a tremendous disservice pretending that Obama's corrosive subservience to right-wing ideology isn't tremendously damaging not just to the Democratic Party but the country as a whole.

Right on, annoyed (and aren't we ALL!)! How dare Obama stop campaigning to actually negotiate policy and get bills passed and shit! Everybody knows that he should have just been YELLING at everybody all the time, cause that's the only way to really get anything done!

"The White House has made repeated good-faith efforts to work constructively with Republicans, and they're not interested."

Liberal Democrats are of course interested, but in this White House, negotiating to the left is very unpossible.

And if he had only reached out more to the left, he could have easily picked up enough extra votes for cloture in the Senate and passed whatever he wanted!

Obama could have gotten significantly more done if he'd taken the advice of progressives in January 2009 and pushed hard for a larger stimulus that was more tightly focused on job growth (instead of unstimulative giveaways to appease right-wingers).

Obama would have more support of actual progressives if he'd pursued criminal cases against the torturers and war-criminals.

(... or filibustered the amnesty for Republican's criminal spying or hadn't done secret back-room deals with Big-Pharma and the predatory Corporate insurers, or refused to push for more dirty-energy projects, or eliminated exorbitant payouts to the Banksters and the private contractors like Xe-Blackwater, or refused to cripple strong regulatory language, or didn't support assassinating American citizens from robot-planes... and that's just the 'short list').

"joe", Obama doesn't need to start "YELLING", simply using the President's 'bully-pulpit' and consistently using his tremendous rhetorical abilities to push for the progressive policies his supporters claimed he was for would have made (still could make) a tremendous "change".

Instead Obama gave US right-wing Republican-lite "change" that the right-wing extremists now declare is the 'new left'.

And, like I said, if Obama had "more support of actual progressives", then that would have translated into more votes in the Senate, right? So that Democrats could have passed ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING WE EVER EVER WANTED, right? If he had just PUSHED HARD, then the number of votes wouldn't have ever mattered, right? Because SO MANY REPUBLICANS would have said, "HEY, Obama's PUSHING HARD! We should vote HIS WAY!" Right?

Annoyed...yes, that's it. Off the top of my head, The Bully Pulpit would have magically moved Ben Nelson several degrees to the left on the political spectrum; would've removed the "blue dog" label from Bayh; and erased the 1 mile wide streak of spite affixed to Joe Lieberman's back...

Obama's support of regressive Blue-dogs eviscerates Obama apologists excuse that the Blue-dogs are preventing Obama from doing what he really wants.

Obama has gone out of his way to support Blue-dogs, even when it's crippled superior Democratic alternatives.

And now Obama's regressive subservience to those right-wingers has not only depressed the Democratic base it's also crippled the economy through his adoption of fraudulent right-wing economic ideology and appointment of the reckless right-wing economic ideologues who helped create the Republican's 2007 Great Recession.

(see: Obama's appointment of Republican Bernanke, Obama's appointments of right-wing economic ideologues Summers and Geithner, and now Obama's regressive Cat-Food Commission that wants to cut progressive policies, to name just a few things.)

I've spent most of the past 10 years regretting my 2000 vote for Nader (in the "safe" Commonwealth of Massachusetts, so it had no actual impact), and accepting that "purity" comes at a very real cost to millions of people. I've spent most of the last 10 years buying into the incrementalist arguments that some progress is better than none.
But the last few years have me once again doubting this. I'm not returning to the more stark Naderite view that there really isn't a "dime's worth of difference" between the parties; obviously there is. But is it enough of a difference? Especially with the kind of Democrats we have in the Obama administration and the "conservadems" in Congress?
Because Obama did not hold true to the policies and priorities on which he was elected, we now have an electorate that includes far too many people who have been sold on the idea that "liberal" ideas don't work -- and that the Democratic party, as currently constituted, is "liberal."
At this point, I'm finding it impossible to avoid the conclusion that the best possible thing now is for the BPublicans to win, and get to reinstate the insane policies that nearly trashed the entire world's economic structure. It's becoming irrefutable that too many American voters have become convinced that nobody -- not the Dem's, not the BPublicans, nobody -- is out to take care of them.
The stimulus package -- which every honest economist of all political stripes recognizes was successful in averting a completely catastrophic meltdown -- is viewed by far too many as having been unsuccessful. And why? Because the BPublicans ensured that would be so.
It's rapidly becoming undeniably clear that the only way Americans will really get the political and economic realities under which we're now operating will be to let the Publicans take nominal control again -- as opposed to the real control they currently enjoy, while being able to foist the blame on Obama and the Congressional Dem's.
It took a decade-long Depression for Americans to learn that lesson last century. It seems nothing less is necessary now.

"smartalek", I understand your passion, but in the end I will work for and vote for Obama in the General Election.

All I need to do is review the radical differences between the votes of the right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court and moderate conservative Sonia Sotomayor's voting record.

The Supreme Court MATTERS and is a legacy of a President that lasts for DECADES.

Another Republican President would more than just throw US into another awful Republican Great Depression, the more lasting legacy would be the appointment of even more corrosive right-wing activists on the Supreme Court.

Keep in mind, one of the biggest obstacles to FDR's liberal policies ended up being the Supreme Court.

Enabling another Republican President to put more regressive sociopaths on the Supreme Court is the worst possible future I can imagine for America.

Annoyed...there were 60 Dems in the Senate. He needed every single vote to get anything passed. He was REQUIRED to obtain Blue Dog support. Now without a super majority, he's REQUIRED to get some level of Republican support. These are not tough concepts.

Seriously, these "push harder and things would've been different, because Obama is the boss of them" tantrums are getting tiresome.

Lamb/Sheep/Fool

60 votes are NOT "REQUIRED" to pass legislation.

The Senate is NOT "REQUIRED" to have the filibuster.

By the way, how often were 60 votes "required" to pass legislation during Republican Bush's reign?

(seriously, I can't recall a single instance)

While Obama-apologists condemn explaining factual reality as "tantrums", it doesn't change the FACTS.

The outstretched hand by the left [is followed]with the clenched clock across the face by the right....

This quote is actually true - the only thing wrong with it is improper capitalization - Left and Right should be capitalized to reflect left-leaning politicians and right-wing politicians.

Annoyed, I think Democrats should try harder but I don't think the rules>/i> were different during Bush's reign. The Dems just acted more responsibly as far as that context goes. Given the rules and the rules about how to change rules, it may not be as easy as it seems to stop filibustering. If you don't like or agree, please offer specific proposals and show how they work in the context of actual procedure. (I'm not saying it can't be done, just put up.)

smartalek: If Rebaglicans win, everything is just horrible and they find ways to never lose again (2008 is a mistake they vow to never let repeat.) It would teach many people a lesson alright - how stupid it is to ever let them back into power, but their base is so vicious and insane you can't count on that doing the trick. Wacky reverse psych tricks ("the worse, the better") are horribly dangerous.

As for the overall post, I'm glad Obama is kicking some ass!

You know, if there were more votes to be gained to the left of him than to right, I'm sure Obama would be reaching in that direction. But the fact is, on most issues, he already has those votes and still needs more. That's why he moves right. Maybe folks who complain about him not reaching to the left need to work harder to make sure there's more for him to reach out to. The center is where the voters make it, not where Obama would like it to be.

Annoyed, so now it is on Obama to change the rules of the Senate? He can make Reid eliminate the filibuster? Your tantrum keeps getting more ridiculous.