The GOP’s game plan: Block everything and then blame Obama for coming up short

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-gops-game-plan-to-end-obamas-presidency/2012/01/02/gIQAt9f4VP_blog.html

Posted at 09:13 AM ET, 01/02/2012

The GOP’s game plan to end Obama’s presidency

By Greg Sargent

National Republicans who are putting together the battle plan to defeat Obama face a dilemma. How do they attack Obama’s presidency as a failure, given that voters understand just how catastrophic a situation he inherited, continue to like Obama personally, and see him as a historical figure they want to succeed?

The answer is simple: Republicans will make the argument that Obama fell short of expectations as he himself defined them. snip

Of course, Obama had barely been sworn into office before the national Republican leadership mounted a concerted and determined effort to prevent any of Obama’s solutions to our severe national problems from passing, even as they openly declared they were doing so only to destroy him politically. Republicans have admitted on the record that deliberately denying Obama any bipartisan support for, well, anything at all was absolutely crucial to prevent voters from concluding that Obama had successfully forged ideological common ground over the way out of the myriad disasters Obama inherited from them.

While it’s true that disapproval of Obama on the economy is running high over government’s failure to fix the economy, the independents and moderates who will decide the presidential election agree with Obama’s overall fiscal vision — his jobs creation proposals and insistence on taxing the wealthy to pay for them. They also recognize that Republicans are more to blame than Dems for government’s failure to implement those proposals. But as Steve Kornacki recently noted, blaming Obama for failing to transcend politics as usual despite determined GOP opposition may be the best way to give indys and moderates a reason to vote against Obama even though they generally agree and sympathize with him. And so, after doing everything in their power to prevent Obama from successfully transcending partisanship and achieving transformative change — even if it meant repeatedly opposing solutions to profound national problems they once embraced — Republicans will now attack him for failing to transcend partisanship and achieve transformative change.

[Scuba]

1. And a big chunk of the American public is dumb enough to fall for it...

... it's up to the rest of us to help educate them.

[Evasporque]

2. Duh....

Hasn't that been obvious?

[killbotfactory]

3. Well, it's been working on some progressives. nt

[maggiesfarmer]

4. nawww, it didn't work during Clinton's presidency

note: Clinton had a democratic majority in house & senate during his first 2 years but faced a republican congress during his second 2 years.