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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jules Witcover
President Obama
While President Obama continues to plead for an end to partisanship, the outlook for it in the wake of his State of the Union Address seems bleaker than ever.
The Republicans in the
If they can hold their party solidarity -- and votes all last year indicated remarkable cohesion opposing every major Obama legislative initiative -- they can truly live up to the Democrats' label of the
The political question is whether that posture can produce Republican gains in November's midterm congressional elections, or will general a voter backlash against the congressional nay-saying?
So far, the public mood seems to favor the out party, with the growing populist view that the Obama administration is more concerned with Wall Street than with Main Street. Combatting that perception was a principal objective of the president's address to
His heavy emphasis on job creation, followed the next day by a town meeting in Tampa at which he unveiled a new
Obama was in old campaign mode, to the point that he brought along Vice President Joe Biden, head of his
But Obama's speech to
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia openly scoffed at Obama's continued talk of bipartisanship in the State of the Union speech. In it, the president also reminded the country of the previous Republican administration's role in the economic collapse, as well as its paternity of two wars left on his doorstep.
Rather than Obama's mild coaxing of the opposition party to do business with him, many Democrats in
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for one was quoted in the
She speaks, however, from the
In these circumstances, the virtual disappearance of the old liberal-to-moderate Republican bloc in the
Not only are all Republican senators thus empowered. Democratic senators willing to barter their votes for parochial benefits also must be wooed as Obama searches for illusory bipartisanship. How much longer will he turn the other cheek to those who continue to stonewall him?
Available at Amazon.com:
I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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Obama's Post-Partisan Pipedream | Jules Witcover
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