Tag: Obama Presidency

The GOP Translation of Obama’s State of the Union Speech

Buck Banks

You won nothing in November. The 2014 election had no consequences for my Administration whatsoever. You may have beaten my party and members of my team in the mid-term elections, but you’ve never beaten me. And, now you never will. All this talk about compromise and working together means you do what I want, because I’m not meeting you halfway on anything. My veto pen is ready and inked up. I will fight you and your agenda til the movers come on January 20th, 2017. I am still the President.

— GOP pollster Neil Newhouse translates President Obama’s State of the Union address.

Obama’s Checking His List and Checking Things Off

Buck Banks

He’s going down a checklist of thorny, longstanding problems, and he’s doing whatever he can to tackle them. These are things that have been tearing at us for decades and generations. My sense is his feeling is, I’m not going to leave office without doing everything I can to stop them.

— David Axelrod, quoted by the New York Times, on President Obama’s recent actions.

Obama Regains His Relevance, Sticks It to GOP

Buck Banks

Less than a month after suffering an electoral drubbing, President Obama has succeeded in placing the majority of the internal party angst back in the other camp. The president’s move on immigration has made that the overriding issue as Republicans face down a government funding deadline of next Friday. In fact, it now looks likely to become the overriding issue when Republicans try to do much of anything, in the current Congress and the new Congress, for the next few months at least. GOP leaders’ early plans of avoiding shutdown talk have already been forced into rewrite. It’s now clear that Republicans will have to work through their internal party discord – yes, again – even as they reconvene in Washington in substantially greater numbers.

— Rick Klein, on ABC’s “The Note” blog.

Malloy Explains How He Survived the Midterms

Buck Banks

I was never going to run away from the president. It was not even in consideration. I support the president. I think the president has been right. I mean, look at the numbers, look at the job growth, sustained job growth—the greatest in American history. The. Greatest. In. American. History. Why didn’t people run on that?

— Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D), quoted by the Daily Beast, on why he was one of the few Democrats who survived the 2014 midterm elections.

Why Republicans Don’t Need to Govern

Buck Banks

You can’t simply assert, like it’s some sort of natural fact, that Republicans ‘must show they can govern’ when an alternative course is available. Not only is it not a secret — this other direction — but it’s being strongly urged upon the party by people who are a key part of its coalition. … The alternative to ‘show you can govern’ is to keep President Obama from governing. Right? Keep him from accomplishing what he wants to get done in his final two years and then ‘go to the country,’ as Karl Rove used to say, with a simple message: time for a change! This is not only a valid way to proceed, it’s a pretty likely outcome.

— Jay Rosen, on his PressThink blog.