Brown’s victory will change the Democratic majority in the US Senate from 60-40 to 59-41. But listening to political pundits you’d think that he alone now holds the power not only to defeat Obama’s policy agenda (most notably healthcare reform), but also to render him a failed one-term president. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Not least because I doubt this wannabe a full-term senator will risk the wrath of Massachusetts’ liberal voters by siding with rabid, hoping-Obama-fails conservative Republicans on very many issues.
[The election of Scott Brown: full of sound and fury…, TIJ, January 20, 2010]
Wingnuts in the Republican Party are already branding him a red (commie) traitor. Why…? Because, as the opening quote attests, Scott Brown did yesterday exactly what I predicted he would do: he demonstrated that he will not blindly support their conservative-traditional agenda just to undercut President Obama’s progressive-transformative agenda.
Mind you, it should tell you all you need to know about these wingnuts (a.k.a. Christian conservatives) that just weeks ago they were heralding Brown as the Moses of their Party, now they’re damning him as just another Judas. (If Brown were smart, he would leave the Republican Party and run for reelection in 2012 as an Independent….)
Their instructive, Talibanic denunciation of him came over a jobs bill, which actually included – in the spirit of bipartisanship – job-creation measures that Democrats demanded as well as tax-cutting provisions that Republicans always touted as an article of their legislative faith. Yet only Brown and four other Republicans voted to support this bill. The other 36 members of their caucus in the Senate voted to kill it.
This clearly proves that Republicans are so determined to see Obama fail that they would even vote against their own avowed policies if he expresses any support for them. And this fanatical hypocrisy is bound to be on display on Thursday when Obama invites them to the White House for televised negotiations over healthcare reform.
But much to the delight of Democrats, and chagrin of Republicans, Brown has already shown himself to be far more principled than members of either party anticipated:
I hope my vote today is a strong step toward restoring bipartisanship in Washington.
(Scott Brown)
This bodes well for Obama; never mind that he reportedly plans to fund this jobs bill “by a crackdown on offshore tax shelters” in the Caribbean. Yet he too is now doing exactly what I predicted he would do:
I fear, however, that, racial pride aside, those in this region who heralded Obama’s election as the dawn of a new day in US-Caribbean relations are in for a rude awakening… Even if he manages to turn his attention to us, it would probably only be to cripple our banking industry by closing “loopholes” in the US tax code, which allow American corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid taxation by using the offshore accounts that have become so integral to our regional economy.
[Obama elected…and world celebrates ‘change’, Caribbean Net News, November 7, 2008]
Special Note on Republican Strategy
Far too many pundits are flattering Republicans by propagating the notion that their politics of obstruction and nullification represent a shrewd strategy for reclaiming power in Washington. These pundits don’t even bother to qualify their ennobling flattery by noting the ominous fact that this strategy is institutionalizing legislative partisanship and gridlock.
What strikes me most about it, however, is the way Republicans are trying to marginalize, and even delegitimize, Obama as president of the United States.
This is why people like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Glen Beck keep referring to him as a socialist who “does not share the core values of the American people.” They also cultivate alienation among feral supporters toward him by giving credence to demonstrably false claims about Obama being a Muslim who was not even born in the USA.
It might be too politically incorrect for others to say, but here’s calling this spade a spade: the only thing that explains why this patently irrational strategy has gained such currency among Republicans is bad old-fashioned racism. And no doubt this racial antipathy is only made more indignant by the uppity Obama’s declared aspiration to be an even more transformational president than their beloved Godfather, Ronald Reagan.
In any event, having spent the first year of his presidency trying to reason with unreasonable Republicans, Obama now has just cause to use Executive Orders as well as congressional procedures like Reconciliation to enact his legislative agenda. And he need not worry about too much backlash because these lunatic Republicans comprise no more than 25 percent of the electorate.
So here’s to “Rahming” healthcare reform, immigration reform, deficit reduction, and other sensible legislation down their throats, Mr. President!
Related commentaries:
Election of Scott Brown…
Obama elected…
* The commentary was originally published yesterday afternoon at 12:54
wanga says
good article as usual.Scott Brown did’t anything different than he promised.
congrats on five years in the business. I have five days