At least the charade is over. For
far too long, President Barack Obama clung to the notion that we
can all get along in a bitterly divided capital and nation.
He’d come to look like a chump being rolled -- and rolled
again -- by his Republican opposition. His most ardent
supporters were losing faith as he sought to show independents
what a reasonable fellow he is.
Last week, Obama dropped the demeanor of the Grand
Compromiser and came out swinging in his address to a joint
session of Congress. He kept his dukes up on his jobs tour,
which he pointedly began in Richmond, Virginia, home of House
Majority Leader Eric Cantor. He told Congress, in effect, “Yeah,
I’m going to pay for my $447 billion jobs bill by raising taxes
on the well-to-do: Want to make something of it?”
Republicans won’t negotiate with Obama in good faith or
bad. (Witness the debt-ceiling fight, during which they welcomed
plummeting markets and financial chaos as preferable to
political compromise.) After a muted response to Obama’s speech
-- a moment of silence in which they perhaps contemplated
Congress’ 15 percent approval rating -- Cantor and Speaker John Boehner both damned Obama’s proposal as a “tax increase on job
creators.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the
bill “a hodgepodge of retread ideas” (some of which had been
embraced by Republicans until the moment Obama proposed them).
The Republican stand is clear: They will support no tax
increases no matter what, with the exception of new levies on
the poor to ensure that they have “some skin in the game,” as
Republican Senator Dan Coats of Indiana memorably put it. Gaping
loopholes for the rich, including the one that enables hedge
fund billionaires to pay taxes at a fraction of the rate of
middle-class workers, will be vigorously defended.
Obama’s Choice
Contrast, not compromise, is Obama’s new tack. Obama has
now laid out the choice that he wants to define the 2012
election. On one side, a Republican Party committed to
protecting corporate jets, Wall Street financiers and the
outsize share of national private wealth -- more than one-third
and growing larger -- held by the wealthiest 1 percent. On the
other, a Democratic president committed to securing the
livelihoods of teachers, construction workers, first responders
and other pillars of a middle class under siege.
Even obstructionist Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South
Carolina says the contrast puts Republicans in a bind.
“If we vote for this plan, we’ll own the economy with the
president, and he desperately needs someone else to blame it
on,” DeMint said. “If we vote against it, he’s going to try to
say Congress blocked his ability to create jobs.”
JPMorgan Chase predicts that Obama’s jobs bill would
increase growth by 1.9 percent and create 1.5 million jobs. That
doesn’t mean it will happen. Republicans are willing to risk a
double-dip recession as they wait for the inauguration of
President Romney or Perry, or a white knight yet to be named.
“The people who sent us here,” Obama said in his speech to
Congress, “don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months” for help.
In Columbus, Ohio, 3,500 people cheered when Obama said he could
create jobs if other politicians stopped “worrying so much about
their jobs.”
High unemployment is a death knell for incumbent
presidents. Yet public mistrust of Republicans appears to be
keeping Obama in the game. A Public Policy Polling survey taken
just after Obama’s jobs speech found that Obama leads former
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney by 49 percent to 45 percent.
Weak Opponents
His lead over Texas Governor Rick Perry has grown to 52-41
from 49-43 in August. The Republican presidential candidates are
undoubtedly weak, a status confirmed by the continued calls for
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to enter the fray. The
question is whether they are weak enough to lose to a battered
incumbent struggling against a historic high tide of
joblessness.
This week, Democrats lost two special House elections, one
in New York’s boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens to replace the
tweeting Anthony Weiner, a seat Democrats had held for most of
the past century, and the other in Nevada, where Republican Mark Amodei crushed Democrat Kate Marshall by 22 points. Obama, the
most reasonable of men, appears to realize that he can’t bide
his time while waiting to get even with his foes. He needs to
get mad. And so he has.
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