Congressional Republicans are shocked and on the defensive because President Obama has refused to be humbled by their election victory. The president has responded to the Republican takeover of congress with a flurry of action that has destroyed Boehner and McConnell’s agenda.
The Hill reported,
The GOP hoped Obama would be humbled by the midterm elections that saw Democrats swept from power in the Senate.
Instead, when Obama delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress completely controlled by the GOP on Tuesday, Republicans will see a confident Obama who is bullish about his own approval ratings and no longer worried about anyone else’s reelection.
….
Obama’s address to both chambers of Congress will attempt to highlight the differences between Democrats and Republicans. “He’s trying to make clear what the differences in philosophy are between the two parties,” said Mike Lux, a Democratic strategist. “He’s very clearly saying, ‘Look, I’m going to propose things I know the Republicans aren’t going to agree with, whether it’s progressive taxation, a free community college system or immigration.’ “
Republicans expected the “let’s work together” president of years past. Instead, what they have gotten is a president who appears to have learned that congressional Republicans have no interest in real compromise, so Obama went on the offensive and was ready for a fight. Besides being the Democratic counterpoint to the Republican agenda, the president is also setting his party up for 2016.
Obama is building a ready-made platform that his party is already rallying around. The Democratic nominee will be free to embrace as much or as little of this agenda as she chooses, but she will be inheriting leadership of a party that increasingly looks like it will be ready for action. Losing the Senate has been a blessing in disguise for President Obama. The president no longer has to weigh Democratic congressional reelection calculus into every decision that he makes.
John Boehner and Mitch McConnell misjudged the president’s reaction to the defeat and the political environment. The Republican-controlled Congress has had no honeymoon with the American people. The president’s approval ratings have risen while theirs have stayed near record lows.
It turns out that it was Senate Democrats not House Republicans who were holding the president back, and instead of being humbled, Barack Obama has been unleashed.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
Who let the dog out?! Woof, woof, woof! Lol!
I’m glad he’s no longer trying to accommodate them, because their view of cooperation involves concessions only from him with none from them. He has nothing to lose by pursuing his own agenda notwithstanding their predictable whining. They got what they wanted by gaining numerical majority in the Senate as well as the House. They also got much more than they bargained for in the form of an invigorated president who is prepared to pursue his own agenda with or without their cooperation.
“The Democratic nominee will be free to embrace as much or as little of this agenda as ‘SHE’ chooses, but ‘SHE’ will be inheriting leadership of a party that increasingly looks like it will be ready for action.”
We hope that ‘SHE’ will be
ELIZABETH WARREN!!!!!
(and Not the screaming Billary, PLEASE!)
The Republican “victory” is a result of fraud, hypocrisy, duplicity, disingenuousness, dishonesty, intimidation, voter suppression, and other political chicanery. A good man is not humbled. To the contrary, he is outraged.
Perhaps the Republicans should watch Tora Tora Tora! or read a book on Pearl Harbor, they may have stepped into the role of Japan…and we all know what happened. Let’s hope Nov.4th of 2014 will be the Imperial Right Wings Aug.6th of 1941…
Well I sure hope the dems run with the ball for a change. If they don’t move to the left more and help the working people in this country then I will be sitting home in the future. I just don’t want to vote for republican lite. I want a party that really wants to work for us and not give us lip service.
The GOP is going to wish they could rewind history back to the good old days when President Obama was more complacent, hoping that the GOP would compromise if he did first.
Those days are gone GOP!
If you don’t vote to keep the worst people out of office, you’re part of the problem.
Finally, the American People are getting the president that we voted for twice! I can feel HOPE growing as Obama keeps going!
Yes, we all know this. So what are the democrats doing to prevent this from happening again? I don’t know, I just vote!
Oh, the very things they are guilty of, they accuse the dems of……always playing the victim card when all else fails!
Not voting in these contentious times of voter suppression – the new poll tax – is giving your vote, by default, to a Republican. We can’t stress this warning enough.
No matter how disenchanted the RW voters become, they’ll always, always turn out and vote. Why? Because they’ll take a Republican, even one not right-wing enough for their scary right-wing tastes, over a Democrat any day.
So I hope you’re just speaking out of frustration and that you will vote straight Democrat in 2016. Democrats are more aligned with the Left’s agenda than Republicans will ever be. Always remember that.
That the GOP chose a pig castrator to respond to Obama, this evening clearly shows what they mean by “humbling”. Too bad for them that while they are slogging through the swamps, Obama is at the top of his game.
My fantasy is that Obama calls attention,to their choice, then ask if a pig castrator is the best the GOP could do… followed by that wicked Obama chuckle.
He’ll OWN them!
Yep. Just like the “Grand Bargain” where the president would have put chained CPI forward if Republicans raised taxes on the wealthy. As he guessed they would, they rejected that proposal. Later, they tried to push for chained CPI but keep tax cuts for the rich, but the president clearly told them that that bargain was dead and gone.
Hey Huck! If President Obama came upon a guy in a broken down pick-up, he would call AAA and pay for the tow. He didn’t go to Harvard to be a mechanic! Doncha love it when he plays 3-D Chess! Obama gets ‘er done! It’s going to be an interesting 2 years!
Now we see that it were congressional Democrats – more specifically, Senate Democrats – who had hamstrung our president for six years. Republicans would only have had the power to obstruct so successfully with a complicit Democratic majority in the Senate. And so it happened.
Their first warning shot was refusing to give the president the $80 million he needed to shutdown Gitmo. At a vote of 90-6, they stopped him cold and wrote a law that prevented him from even trying. I knew back then they were trying to rope him down.
Now that the Democrats have lost power in the Senate, the rope’s snapped and our president is coming out like the powerful man he is and what we’ve always known him to be.
again – the republicans “thought” they were going to bully the president once they took over both house and senate but little did they know that “karma” is a bear and the president has a lot more up his sleeve. go get ’em sir !
I can’t wait to hear another surprise shoe to drop tonight. I think President Obama kept one or two zingers to whap them upside the head.
I like Obama unleashed! I bet those Democrats that ran from the president in the midterms are rethinking their position. Hear this Ms. Grimes of Kentucky…
Gah! I just heard the repubs are going to have 3 rebutal speeches. Lol…..they are pissed.
He has put on his steel toed boots , and ready to kick GOP ass for the next 2 years…
GO OBAMA !!!!
By not voting all you do is surrender to the enemy.
Wow, Great Piece Jason Easley!
“He’s trying to make clear what the differences in philosophy are between the two parties,”
That’s THE KEY!
Too many Americans don’t know!
What’s a short phrase for that?
Awaken America?
This should be our goal for 2016!
I keep hearing about Joni Ernst who will give the GOP reply to the state of the union, she touts her foreign policy expertise and her tours of duty in Afghanistan, she was in the National Guard who as far as I know have short deployments, I cannot find the length of her time there – does anyone have that info?
No but here is how she think: Let’s ignore the pre-2014 policy positions Ernst tried to run away from, such as support for a “personhood” amendment that would ban all abortions, or opposition to the UN’s harmless but, to right-wingers, terrifying Agenda 21. Let’s just look at positions she espoused during her campaign for Senate.
She advocated repealing Obamacare. She said she favored abolishing the Education Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. She spoke in support of partial privatization of Social Security. She advocated an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget. When asked whether she supports a minimum-wage increase, she told an interviewer, “I do not support a federal minimum wage.”
The Senate’s 46 Democrats got 20 million more votes than its 54 Republicans
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/3/7482635/senate-small-states/in/5654656
senator castrator will flop in her slop
It’s like, Obama is playing 3-D mental chess with the Repubs, and they are playing checkers.
Well, well, well.. Looks like not ONLY the President, but the American people have had a bellyful of the so called republican party’s antics. ABOUT TIME!
The American public is tired of the lies, schemes, half truths, inuendos and out and out bull of the republican whiners.
The President (BLESS HIM) is NOT one of those Presidents that the gop can push around. Looks like Obama is pushing back. AGAIN, About Time! The gop is finding out the “hard way” that the people are NOT going to be pushed around by the childish, bullying, lies and half truths spewed continually by the gop and their eternal “butt plug-in,” “faux noise!”
AGAIN, ABOUT TIME!
God BLESS America!
That’s how I felt when I voted for Dianne Feinstein. However bad she is, the other guy was worse.
More like Marbles. And they keep losing them.
I wish we’d seen this Obama six years ago, instead of waiting until now, with no more elections in his future and nothing to lose.
After Mr. Obama finishes neutering Congress this evening, listening to a simple pig castrator will be anti-climatic.
But the irony is sweet……
How many times does Warren have to say she won’t run before you believe her? Listen, if she did decide to run I’d happily vote for her; but she says she won’t run, and I’m happy with the job she’s doing right where she is.
That’s always been the only reason to vote for Mrs. Feinstein. As it is, she’s perilously close to being a moderate Republican herself.
Do you remember Michelle Bachmann’s response to Obama’s speech, how wild-eyed she looked….?
Thank you Mr.Lehmberg, you said it so well. That is the ONLY reason they ever win. Case in point. Renee Ellmers came to NC from Michigan to make a killing off Medicare and Medicaid. And the outsiders “poured” millions into her first campaign, gerrymandered parts of EIGHT districts to make sure she won…to fight “Obamacare”. Against a Democrat from a very poor district. But she still, after a runoff just “won” by less than 1500 votes. After watching what the carpetbaggers and their bosses have done to my state. I could never believe a word they say about anything. This last election was even more of a farce. But even if it was hopeless I still grabbed my walker and went to vote. If the republicans were forced to be honest the party would already be dead.
remember, this hog castrator is the one who actually claimed she has seen the evidence and that saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction before the US invaded. but they suddenly disappeared when we showed up. when she was pressed for the details, she refused. just another worthless rightwing liar.
That’s just holding a gun to our head, I’m done voting for the lesser of two evils. “Vote for me, I’m not as bad as that other guy – He eats babies.” is not a campaign plan.
Here’s a little Haiku poetry:
Gauntlets thrown freely
Balls to the wall speech tonight
Knives being sharpened
I thought to myself tonight, listening to Mr. Obama, that no matter how the repubs and racists (or was that redundant?) hate him and try to tear him down, this man, like only JFK before him, has the power to really REACH people when he takes the podium. Not every speech is a barn burner, but tonight was Obama at his greatest. Relaxed, to-the-point, and ready to do battle. He has plenty of toys in his corner of the sandbox, and seems prepared to use them. Love it! And the best they can do is stand Ernst up there? I tuned out a minute into her spiel. :)
What’s this I read this morning that Boehner invited Netanyahu to speak before congress next month talk about Iran!
Poor Tan Man just could not help himself. Just had to get back at the President someway somehow.
Obama Unleashed! Republicans in a corner saying Whaaaaaa’s Happening?