No, not every opposition chooses to actually make things worse just to get power later.
That was not the Republicans’ goal. Republicans have acted entirely consistently with achieving their policy goals. When the President wanted free trade agreements, they worked to get those passed for him, over Democratic opposition. It would have been so easy to just obstruct them to obstruct them, but they didn’t. Republicans have held spending down since taking the House. That’s not sabotaging Obama, that’s HELPING him, especially since a certain writer used it to claim that Obama’s the lowest spender since Ike(false even with Republican help).
“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
Mitch McConnell was saying that to justify obstruction over negotiation, even if it meant giving up a chance to achieve their goals.
I am not the least bit afraid of politics. I understand that you have to get power before you can use it. Maybe the Republicans think their agenda is so awesome that it’s worth holding the country in a headlock until they can take the White House. The question is whether the voters agree, and are willing to suffer even more to get that. I think even many Republicans would rather have government that works reasonably well, NOW, than for the two great powers to use their country as a playground for their power struggles.
Including what was originally their own damn health care plan? :dubious:
Or the previously cited piece of legislation that they voted down that they cosponsored?
Wow is there a shit load of revisionism going on here! The Republicans have been so opposed to Obama, they’ve opposed their own positions just because Obama has supported them. They’ve voted against their own bills. They’ve caused the downgrading of America’s credit rating via an unprecedented opposition to paying our existing debts. They haven’t cooperated on shit, and their position had been entirely “Let Obama be undone though America may fall.”
They haven’t been this insane since… the last time a Democrat was in the White House.
Funny, I thought every opposition, just like every party in power, wanted what was best for the U.S.A. They just had different visions of what was best.
In any Presidential administration, there’s a lot of stuff that the party in power would support, regardless of which party it is, because both sides agree it’s good for the country. As a general rule, the party out of power has gone along with passing such legislation because, you know, it’s good for the country.
The current GOP has basically thrown that out the window. They are willing to stick it to the country in order to get back in power.
Now every political party has done things that put party ahead of country in some minor way. But this isn’t around the edges anymore; it’s right down the middle. The GOP is willing to see schools only able to meet four days a week, willing to see bridges collapse and paved roads go back to gravel, and plenty more stuff like that, because fixing such things would put people back to work, which would be good for the economy, and increase Obama’s re-election prospects.
If doing what’s good for America stands in the way of their electoral prospects, then screw you, America, is their attitude.
How anyone can think that’s OK is beyond me.
To think that in this day in age, that we would have group of powerful white men whose hate for Obama is so strong, that they would punish all of America, just to make look like a failure is treasonous.
It’s like this:
The voters had a car that was running pretty well, but a new mechanic in town was pretty cool, the kind of a guy you’d like to have a beer with.
Well, this mechanic might have been nice enough, but he was a shitty mechanic, and ended up wrecking the alternator, cracked several spark plugs, and punched a hole in the gas line by mistake. Screwed the car up good and proper.
So they got a new mechanic. The new mechanic started fixing up the other guy’s screw-ups. Took a while. Had to order new parts.
Meanwhile, guys from the old mechanic’s shop started sneaking in and pulling random wires out of the car and night, completely buggering the electrical system. The new mechanic had to fix this now.
What some are saying now is that the new mechanic did not fix the car fast enough or nice enough. He’s a failure. He did not do a great job on the car that was screwed up by the old mechanic, and sabotaged by some guys in the old mechanic’s shop.
Now some voters are saying that we should take the car back to the old mechanic’s shop (which is now run by some rich guy who has never actually worked on a car before, but has some books by the old mechanic on how to wreck an alternator and rip out electrical wire).