PrintApril 2, 2010
Partisan Blood Sport
While running for president, one central campaign promise Barack Obama focused on was the eradication of the type of political vitriol rampant within two-party systems. Candidate Obama vowed to singlehandedly rid the nation of the spirit of discord. When newly elected, the president's victory speech elevated the rhetoric above partisanship and condemned the type of separation responsible for "crippl[ing] Washington and turn[ing] national politics into a blood sport."
Obama appeared intent on bringing the nation together, saying, "In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that have poisoned our politics for so long." Disguised as a herald of unanimity, one year later, the president has emerged as an extreme partisan guilty of the type of combative political activity he originally condemned. Ascending to power, Barack Obama espoused ardent desire for bipartisan cooperation. What America failed to take seriously was a liberal senatorial voting record predisposing Barry to implement the agenda of "fundamental transformation" by way of strident partisan rule.
Maybe the nation's confusion is rooted in Barack Obama failing to adequately clarify his unique definition for bipartisanship as unanimous submission, unswerving obedience, and complete concurrence?
Over the past few months, the president's adverse reaction to the slightest hint of resistance has been telling. Continual exposure to adversarial nonconformity by the opposing party to his liberal, left-wing policy edicts has transformed the Nobel Peace Prizewinner into a ferocious competitor.
It seems that America's new president is not timid about engaging in "blood sport." Immediately following the "historic" inauguration, Obama stepped into the ring touting a highly divisive stimulus bill and then passed the budget-buster package strictly along party lines.
Despite all the talk by the US President, Barack Obama, of post-partisan politics, and a personal appeal to Republicans on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, today's vote on the $US 850 billion ($1.2 trillion) stimulus package looks set to go along party lines.
Following Obama's first fiscal conquest, rather than extend a hand of amity, like a swaggering rooster, the victor took the first of many campaign-style struts before supporters while haughtily mocking the challenging party. After pledging to enforce a new tone in politics, the president instead infused life into the political arena with unprecedented cynicism and unmatched condescension.
Reaffirming once again who holds sway over the last word, Obama, together with a Democrat Congress, recently rammed through an unpopular health care reform bill. Prior to the bill being passed into law, and throughout the conflict-ridden negotiations, the president demonstrated a palpable, deep-seated attitude that political survival requires a public persona void of mutual respect.
Immediately following passing the legislation and amidst upheaval and public turmoil, rather than fostering a short season of bipartisan conciliation, Obama decided to set out on a triumphant health care march, mocking Republicans like a juvenile punk after prevailing in a schoolyard brawl.
President Barack Obama dared Republicans to try to repeal his new health care law, telling them to "Go for it...Be my guest," Obama said in the first of many planned appearances to sell the revamp before fall congressional elections. "If they want to have that fight, we can have it."
When polls indicated a vast majority of Americans aligned with Republicans against the health care reform law, Obama responded by thumbing his nose at the opposition and making a recess appointment of a controversial lawyer. In doing so, the president rejected the opportunity to extend healing in the throes of political unrest. Instead, the purported post-partisan president chose to willfully and "immediately deepen the divide between the Democratic president and Republicans in the Senate following a long, bruising fight over health care."
Opposition to the nomination of Craig Becker was not because the appointment was made during recess, which is standard presidential protocol, but rather because the former SEIU lawyer's "radical pro-union agenda" should have no place on the National Labor Relations Board. Yet Obama disregarded conflict of interest concerns as well as wise bipartisan counsel, which advised against the dubious appointment.
In a standard Obama show of defiance, the president "went ahead anyway."
Fitted with ideological gaffes, Barack Obama appears to savor participating in frequent partisan power plays. As a result, during Obama's term, "[t]he hyper-partisan atmosphere in Washington ... remains as entrenched as ever, if not worse." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the Becker debate is "another episode of [Obama] choosing a partisan path despite bipartisan opposition."
After publicly censuring the national pastime of political blood sport, Barack Obama continues to willfully and gleefully agitate political adversaries on any given day and in every conceivable way. By installing another in-your-face, conflict-ridden appointee, Obama again exercised contentious clout in defiance of Republican resistance.
Becker, a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, has spoken favorably on "card check" legislation that would take away the right of employers to demand secret ballot union representation elections. Some of his legal writings suggest that its goals could be accomplished by the NLRB without Congress having to pass the legislation.
After pledging to curtail division, Barack Obama purposely made another disruptive political decision by appointing a lawyer whose curriculum vitae also includes representing ACORN, and Obama then argued the decision as crucial to advance post-partisan ability to lead.
Defying logic, the president defended the divisive, highly partisan selection of Becker by saying, "I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic function of government."
As a result, the president of the "United" States has instigated a new level of partisanship and breathed dissension into a political fight poised to extend far beyond the arena where blood sport once was safely confined.
Author's content: jeannie-ology.com
