"The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you will be able to say as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a statement, not an apology."


Thursday, August 23, 2012

GOP 'Obstructionism'

Nancy Pelosi has penned an Op-Ed this morning repeating a meme the Democrats have grown comfortable using: The GOP Congress is obstructing the President's agenda and sacrificing America's economic well-being for its own political gain.

This trope is at one time two different things; both incomplete and false.

It is false because the Congress is only half-GOP. The Senate is in Democratic control and where jobs measures passed by the House as well as those submitted by the president have gone to die without so much as a vote.

The 'Obstructionist' claim is incomplete because it entirely ignores the fact that President Obama had super-majorities of his own party in both houses his first two years. To pass anything he wanted all he had to do was hold Democrats together.

This he did, passing the stimulus and Obamacare on strictly partly-line votes. Aside from Cap-&-Trade, this was the President's agenda. Not liking it, voters awarded the GOP it's best mid-term since the New Deal.

Apparently what they wanted was a little obstruction.