No offense intended. I assumed you were cherry-picking his issues with Obama, since reading his blog with any scrutiny would’ve readily demonstrated how inaccurate your characterization was.
This should’ve come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention since the campaign started (though “full of earmarks and pork” is both a relative view and a practical inevitability; you don’t do your argument a service by characterizing it as something shockingly new and out-of-place for Washington). Many mods & cons voted for him despite their suspicion that his economic philosophy wouldn’t dovetail with theirs; their confidence in him was for other reasons.
Again, this is a relative view (not to mention incredibly reductive of what they have said about their opponents) and, IMHO, still nowhere near as inflammatory or confrontational as we’ve come to expect from the last recalcitrant administration. And let’s be honest–these bits of back-and-forth only occurred after good faith efforts to cross the aisle and collaborate in a bipartisan fashion were largely rebuffed. It’s the height of hypocrisy that so many Republicans are acting like wilting violets now.
Oh, the fear-mongering media pundits who’ve been wrong over and over about the economy but still have the balls to assert some type of expertise in order to draw attention to themselves? :snort:
And this is where the unrealistic expectations on Obama get to take wing. Personally, I think there’s a difference between defending your position and demonizing your enemy. The best defense is a good offense, and Obama is holding people–like Limbaugh & Cramer & co.–accountable in a way they never have been before. He’s forcing the Republicans to make a choice about the very soul of their party, a schism they’ve being doing their best to try to whistle away. He’s refusing to act like a doormat when the Republicans think they can still posture like they have a majority when they are on the losing side of public opinion (both in polling and at the ballot).
And it is extremely disin…uh, why don’t we say convenient to take these examples and somehow say they are analagous to what we’ve experienced for the last 8 years (which the “politics as usual” label implies). It’s like saying that Ali’s rope-a-dope are indistinguishable from Tyson biting the guy’s ear off. It may be politics, but Obama is a politician. Of course there will be jockeying and maneuvering, but it’s one thing to have that be an arrow in your quiver, which you need to use with savvy and discretion, and it’s another thing when it’s a kneejerk reaction to insure you get your way all the time, every time.
But if you’re more comfortable wringing your hands about “politics as usual”, knock yourself out. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the way politics operate won’t change that quickly either. There are plenty of reasons to see why Obama is dramatically different, both in tactics and in temperment (the fact that quite a few Dems are riled up is the most obvious one), but if you want to fixate on the supposed “similarities”, largely ignoring scale, context, and degree, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. And of course, there’s no evidence to suggest that you’re in anything but decidedly limited company right now.
