Obama’s Trust In Conservative Repbulicans Betrayed

NEOCONS ON CAPITOL HILL UNSUCCESSFULLY TRIED TO STIFLE THE PRESIDENT’S ECONOMIC RECOVERY PACKAGE!

By Glenn S. Reiner

BARACK OBAMA was forced to pull another proverbial rabbit out of his hat this week, opting to again use the same sure-fire strategy that put him in the White House last month.

After extending a political olive branch to GOP Conservatives, who were maimed last November, he was betrayed by the minority party.

Rebuking unrelenting criticism of his economic stimulus and recovery plan from Conservative Republicans, the president took to the road once more, making stops in Elkhart, Indiana and Ft. Meyers, Florida to insure these two especially economically-strapped communities his plan would bring them relief. He also held his first prime-time nationally-televised press conference.

The president attended town-hall style meetings in both places, fielding questions from the participants, while asking for their support to prevent any further delay of his plan. Ironically, the president lost badly in both places last November.

Although a Liberal, the president showed a willingness to govern from the center in order to bring peace to Capitol Hill for the first time in 16 years.

True to his word, his cabinet choices included three Republicans, an unprecedented number in a Democratic administration. While in office for the past three weeks, he’s reached out to GOP leaders in key meetings at the White House.

And in a display of good faith, he traveled last week to Capitol Hill, huddling with House and Senate Republicans in separate meetings, hoping to solicit their support for the stimulus package.

Presidents generally don’t meet with opposition party leaders on their turf. Normally, they come to the White House. But he wanted show them respect in the classiest way.

However, GOP House leaders, true to form, called a meeting of its members an hour before his scheduled arrival, instructing them to vote against the legislation. Yet, not a single word was said to him to about the preceding party caucus, leaving the president optimistic of bipartisan support.

The bill did ultimately pass in the House, but only because the Democrats own a resounding majority — courtesy of the American voters, who were fed up with perennial GOP values that favored Corporate America and the affluent at the expense of the middle-class and the impoverished. Yet, not one single Republican voted in favor of it.

Then when the legislation reached the Senate later in the week, Republican leaders grandstanded against it, referring to the legislation as ‘just another liberal tax-and-spend plan.’ The GOP had used this talking point with great success for 28 years, but the voters finally saw it for what it was worth last November: political sewage.

The party’s leaders rushed in front of cameras outside the Capitol and in the studios of the three major cable news outlets all week, offering bizarre commentary of how they could have done job better at half of price.

And how would they accomplish that? By cutting the better portion of the money designed for necessary programs to help America’s most hard hit by the recession, creating an estimated three million jobs and long-term fiscal stability.

The GOP also wanted to slice any programs in the bill that would have aided the nation’s impoverished and children. But as always, the Republicans proposed further tax relief — especially to Corporate America, the author of this recession.

With 58 seats in the Senate, the Democrats were two short of the required 60 to avoid a Republican filibuster that would have killed the legislation and intensify an already volatile economy as well as the worst unemployment crisis in 26 years.

This is when a bipartisan group of five moderate Senators banded together behind closed doors and crafted a fair and decent compromise package.

Democrats Joe Lieberman (CT) and Bill Nelson (NE), as well as Republicans Arlen Specter (PA) and Susan Collins and Olimpia Snow — both from Maine – worked relentlessly through the entire weekend, much to the chagrin of GOP leaders.

With help from the three moderate Republicans, the $833 billion substitute legislation finally passed, 61-37.

But Senate Republicans refused to cut their losses, accusing their colleagues across the aisle of failing to satisfy Obama’s desire for bipartisan passage.

The House and Senate versions of the plan differed somewhat, and a final $789 billion final measure was hammered out by a Conference Committee a few hours ago.

The legislation will now go back to both houses for a final vote – which should again pass. The president will most likely sign it next week.

Essentially, the president’s bigest mistake was his willingness to work with the  Conservatives in the first place. He never imagined they would play Russian Roulette with lives of so many Americans, utilizing this vital legislation to trash his party.

The president should have learned a lesson from the campaign last fall, knowing these neocons are completely unscrupulous and not capable of compromise.

He should have remembered their futile attempt to discredit him as a candidate with bizarre lies and hyperbole. But we can feel confident White House Chief of Staff  Rahm Emanuel will never allow him to forget that again.

For the GOP, this was no more than political theater of the worst proportions. By opposing the stimulus package, the party launched an overly premature campaign to recapture both houses in 2010, similar to the one former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ran so brilliantly in 1994 – two years after Bill Clinton was elected.

But what they might have done instead is cut their own throats. Barrack Obama is a president who is clearly loved, respected and trusted by the vast majority of Americans, according to all major polls.

The voters, I believe, can now only perceive the Conservatives as the obstructionists they are and have been for a long time.

As long as the trio of moderate Republicans is willing to work with the president and their Democratic colleagues, he will have no need to deal with the Conservatives again, many of which will lose their seats in two years anyway!