Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Weisman: ‘Obama Likely to Scale Back Legislative Plans — In New Political Landscape, Incremental Approach Is in Works to Get Support for Some Proposals on Energy, Immigration.’ I don’t believe this for a moment. ‘President Barack Obama, facing at best narrower Democratic majorities in Congress next year, is likely to break up his remaining legislative priorities into smaller bites in hope of securing at least some piecemeal proposals on energy, climate change, immigration and terrorism policy, White House officials say. In a series of recent campaign appearances, Mr. Obama has talked up the stakes in the November election as he seeks to energize supporters and retain Democratic control of Congress. At the same time, White House officials have begun revamping their legislative strategies. They are talking about a new, more incremental approach, championed by former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel,’ by the way, already running for mayor in Chicago.
He’s already starting to run around neighborhoods. In fact, he produced a video in Washington, made to look like Chicago, to announce his intentions. But this is a feint, this is a head fake. This is a takeoff on how Clinton supposedly triangulated after ’94. Obama is not Clinton. Obama’s not going to slow down. Obama’s not going to moderate, he’s not gonna go incremental. He’s not going to try to get amnesty done in piecemeal. Amnesty he’s gonna try to get done without legislation. Amnesty he’s going to try to get done with some combination of executive orders and other executive actions. (interruption) Well, no, it doesn’t concede that the Democrats are losing. It says here, ‘at best facing narrower Democrat majorities.’
RUSH: At the White House this afternoon at a press briefing, a question from a female reporter to Robert Gibbs: ‘Looking ahead to next year, do you feel the White House needs to make any adjustments in how you work with Republicans, or if it’s up to them, the Republicans, to change completely?’
GIBBS: Our focus right now is on the remainder of October, November, and December, before we — before we get to January.
REPORTER: But it sounds like — the take away I get from that is that really it’s up to them to change, that you guys have for the most part done what you need to do?
GIBBS: We have — the president has reached out to and asked Republicans to participate in the activity that we know of as government. Regrettably, the strategy from the very beginning, from Mitch Connell, to those that serve in the Senate, from John Boehner, from those that serve on the Republican side in the House was to say no.
RUSH: GOP strategy from beginning was to say no. Hey, Mr. Gibbs, it doesn’t matter what the strategy was, they couldn’t stop you anyway. I mean even if the Republicans wanted to endorse everything Obama did, your problem was still the Democrats. Now, look how they play this. The Democrats were the ones that stopped Obama. They had a supermajority in the House. They had 60 seats in the Senate. It was always a joke that the Republicans were saying ‘no.’ It was always a joke that the Republicans were stopping anything. So now this just sets up exactly what I told you last week, exactly what I predicted to be the case. If the Republicans take the house and if they get close to taking the Senate, if they get rid of these Democrat supermajorities — they don’t even really have to take the House. If the Democrats, if Obama is willing for the past two years to blame Republicans anyway when they couldn’t stop it, when the Republicans didn’t have the votes to stop anything, what’s gonna make ’em stop blaming the Republicans when they have more votes? This is exactly the setup for this, exactly what I predicted; exactly what I told you. Obama’s not gonna moderate.
This Wall Street Journal piece, I love the Journal, but this piece is wrong. Obama’s not gonna triangulate. He’s not gonna go incremental. He’s not gonna go piecemeal. He’s not gonna say, ‘You know what, I gotta dial it back and work with these guys. Yeah, I still want amnesty, but I know I’m not going to get it all working with these guys, so I’ll try to get a little bit.’ He’s not going to do that at all. Obama’s patient. He’s been amazingly successful the first year and a half here. Okay, so two years, gridlock is good, by the way. Gridlock is good, especially now. Gridlock would be great, nothing getting done. The only agenda out there is Obama’s. Even if repeal is a big deal, and it is, still not going to have enough votes to override an Obama veto of any legislation that would say repeal or defund health care. That’s gonna require 2012 and a new Republican president, even bigger majorities. But still he’s gonna go I think full bore. He’s gonna take advantage of the fact he can now blame Republicans legitimately.
Obama is gonna act just like Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez lost seats in his midterm election. Chavez was just inspired to go even more extreme to radicalize, and he’s continued to radicalize after losing seats. Hugo Chavez. Obama, same blueprint, etch it in stone, same thing is gonna happen. We know Obama’s got a little list, things he wants to accomplish. So if he can successfully run against the Republicans in 2012, which is what he wants to do, and get his second term, if Michelle permits it, got four more years and a second term, that’s where he’ll score his big victories. I mean for almost two years the press has been telling us Obama’s moderate. For two years, they’ve been telling us the Republicans are standing in the way of this moderate, brilliant young president. Republicans just want him to fail. Republicans just want to say ‘no.’ The Republicans did not say that. I’m the one who said it. The Republicans would not get on board with that right off the bat. I was out there alone on that for a good, what, nine months? Republicans were all publicly saying, ‘No, we want the president to succeed.’
‘Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez –‘ this is October 3rd, yesterday ‘– vowed to ‘radicalize’ his socialist revolution even further after legislative elections that gave the opposition one of its strongest showings during his more than 11 years in power. He started on Sunday by announcing the expropriation of land owned by the Venezuelan agricultural company Agroislena and vowing to hasten the nationalization of land held by the British meat products company Vestey Foods Group.’ So Hugo Chavez, his party loses seats, and he ramps up the radicalization of his country. ‘Chavez rejected the idea of seeking to mend relations with private enterprise, announcing the nationalization of 250,000 hectares (618,000 acres) this month and saying, ‘There will be no deal with the bourgeoisie.” No deal with the bourgeoisie. (imitating new castrati) ‘Are you daring, Mr. Limbaugh, to compare our wonderful little president, Mr. Obama, to Hugo Chavez?’ Yes, Mr. New Castrati, I am. A socialist is a socialist. Socialism is what it is. All I have to do is listen to Gibbs here. I know exactly what these clowns are going to do.
LA Times has a story from Saturday, a couple days ago. ‘Democrats playing on opponents’ words
This election season, they are turning Republicans’ oddball statements — on topics such as witchcraft and the president’s religion — into campaign fodder. And, at least in some races, the tactic seems to be working.’ Kathleen Hennessey, Tribune Washington Bureau. One of the few tactics the Democrats have, making the race about some past statements and not talking about national issues. In fact, that’s a quote from the story. ‘The tactic was one of the few available to Democrats saddled with a national political climate decidedly turned against them and a stubbornly slow economic recovery.’ Kathleen Hennessey, let me tell you something. The dirty little secret here is that the national political climate never was with Obama. This is what we now know. Obama defrauded a tremendous portion of this country, largely independents who are ripe for being defrauded.
All you have to do to get an independent is to talk like you’re neither left nor right, you’re center, and just use the magic word change, just use the magic word change, then talk about lowering the sea levels and America liking the country once. It’s a way to reach Peggy Noonan, just say you don’t like fighting anymore. If you want Peggy Noonan on your side, just say we’ve got to stop fighting, we have to work together and you’ll get her. You want David Brooks on your side, same thing. You want Republican RINO media on your side, just say, we gotta change, we have to stop, we can’t keep going on this way, all this partisanship. Well, the problem with that is Obama was a fraud, he is a far-leftist radical and now his agenda proves it. The American people did not vote for this agenda, Ms. Kathleen Hennessey, and I say that with a great sigh of relief, because after the election, I wasn’t sure. None of us were. We were going, ‘Oh, no, what the hell does this mean?’ I had my doubts, Snerdley, I had my doubts. You know, we’ve been wondering if we lost the country. All of the class envy appeals seem to have worked and anti-capitalism, anti-freedom, is unfair if somebody has a dollar more than you do. I know we were going against McCain, but I don’t think any — (interruption) No, I don’t think anybody else woulda cleaned his clock. I didn’t see anybody out there willing to run against him. This is the point.
We were running against him but people couldn’t vote for us. There was no Republican to run against him. First black president; first black serious candidate? Nobody’s gonna run against him. Don’t have the guts, will be charged with racism. ‘You don’t want this nation to experience the beauty of its first black –‘ Whatever Republican was gonna run was never gonna run against Obama. They would never have the guts to. I’m still not sure that we have a Republican willing to run against him now. We got Tea Partiers, Snerdley. We’ll just have to wait and see. Now, my point here is that this country never was on board for Obama’s political climate. They were sold a bunch of goods and the reason Obama’s in trouble now is because so many independents who voted for the guy, and a lot of Democrats, too, are now realizing they didn’t vote for this.
Who votes for economic destruction? Who votes for ever higher employment? Who votes for home foreclosures? Who votes for declining real estate values? Who votes for a weakening America in terms of national security? Who votes for this? Clearly a majority of Americans are not going to vote for that. A majority Americans are not going to vote for somebody that’s going to make employment worse. They thought Obama was gonna fix it. They thought Obama was gonna fix all the problems. The country is suffering from post-partisan depression, if you ask me.