Word: obamas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Republicans have used this rising disgust with government not just to cripple health care reform but also to derail other Obama initiatives. In a memo to clients on how to defeat new regulation of Wall Street, Republican pollster Frank Luntz urged them to attack "lobbyist loopholes" - items that were put into the financial-reform bill, as in the health care bill, largely to attract enough Democratic votes to break the GOP filibuster. Needing 60 votes has made the debate over every bill on Obama's agenda longer and uglier, which is exactly how the Republicans want...
Last month, when the Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed Americans' views on health care reform, it found that most people still back the individual components of Obama's effort. But enthusiasm for the bill itself - the contents of which remain hazy in the public mind - has faded, just as in 1993. And according to a new poll by CNN/ORC, public approval of Congress stands at its lowest level since - you guessed it - the Gingrich era. Once again, the Republicans have told Americans that they can't trust government with their health care, and once again, their own actions have helped convince...
...core, vicious-circle politics isn't an assault on liberal solutions to hard problems; it's an assault on any solutions to hard problems. It's no surprise that Democrats couldn't successfully filibuster George W. Bush's tax cuts and Republicans couldn't successfully filibuster Obama's stimulus spending. When you're handing out goodies, it's much harder for opponents to gum up the process. As Vanderbilt University's Marc Hetherington has argued, trust in government matters most when government is asking people to make sacrifices. It's when the pain is temporary but the benefits are long...
...Buckley's Firing Line. There's no guarantee that the conversation would be edifying, of course. But it would be a useful antidote to the current cable and blog ghettos, where you can go years without hearing the other side make its case. The recent televised meeting between Obama and the House Republican leadership was a reminder that honest but civil debate can show people that their side isn't infallible and that not everyone on the other side is evil and foolish. (See who's who in Barack Obama's White House...
...another powerful third-party voice were to emerge today, demanding that both parties take real steps to solve problems like global warming and health care - as opposed to the Tea Partyers, who insist that government just get out of the way. Republicans would still disagree profoundly with the Obama Administration's favored remedies, but they would feel greater pressure to amend rather than kill them. Perots would create a countervailing pressure against those partisan zealots who are constantly threatening to punish Republicans for giving the White House an inch. (See pictures of how Presidents age in office...