President Obama has fallen into the John Boehner trap. By attacking Boehner last week — emphatically, repeatedly, and by name — the president made himself look desperate. And by treating Boehner as practically an equal, Obama elevated him.
Boehner was delighted. Obama had helped him fill the leadership void among Republicans. For the president, that’s a negative twofer.
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Recovery summer, opposition to Arizona’s immigration law, negative campaigning and intervention in the ground zero mosque dispute — call them President Barack Obama’s Four Disasters. As policy, they’re questionable. As political exercises, they’re losers. As clues about Obama, they’re evidence he’s lost his political knack.
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The Obama presidency is nearly out of gas. So are the Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. Yet the White House and congressional Democrats aren’t surrendering. They’re still intoxicated with their “historic majorities” and bent on enacting more landmark liberal legislation this year, including cap and trade, a value-added tax (VAT) and who knows what else.
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President Barack Obama’s greatest need is to escape the ideological grip of congressional Democrats and the liberal base of the Democratic party (they’re one and the same). But he either doesn’t recognize this or, as a conventional liberal himself, isn’t so inclined. This self-inflicted difficulty has put Obama in worse political straits than President Bill Clinton faced after the Republican landslide of 1994.
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Congressional Democrats, along with their president, are operating under the assumption that enacting Obamacare will increase their popularity and improve their prospects for reelection.
Does this make sense? Will passing a widely disliked piece of legislation endear voters to those who passed it? Not on your life.
And Obama and Democrats have also embraced the flipside of their dubious calculation. They believe the worst thing that can happen is failing to pass something.
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