The Republicans tried to sink Obama. Instead, the party imploded

[kpete]

If your political priorities are the total defeat of a single politician
– not the advancement of your own policies – it fans the flames of extremism


.........

Before he finished his second year in office, Obama was such an object of Republican loathing that the Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell could say – with impunity – that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

If your political priorities are the total defeat of a single politician – not the advancement of your own policies through debate or legislation – then you are already in pretty desperate shape. You render it impossible to compromise with your opponents, and you fan the flames of extremism that will burn anyone in the center.

You also look weak and foolish when you lose, surrendering the stage to someone who can vilify his opponents better than you. So don’t look dazed and confused at Donald Trump when he runs your playbook more convincingly than your own team. It’s too late to fret about endorsing his kooky positions – like deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, treating all Muslims as enemies and blowing up the deficit – when they are only logical extensions of your own.

After eight years of conservative caricature, you may be forgiven for thinking that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim socialist with terrorist sympathies and job-destroying policies on healthcare and bank regulation.

MORE:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/09/gop-tried-sink-obama-imploded-extremism?CMP=share_btn_tw

[sofa king]

1. Let us not forget to thank the Big O!

What has made President Obama truly great--and this will only continue to grow in retrospect--is his ability to turn the small-minded hatred of his enemies against themselves, especially in Congress.

He knotted their tail in the first two years and has been able to continually succeed since then because the Republicans adopted a highly predictable "no to everything" stance which has allowed him to achieve far more than any other Congressionally-stymied President.

There's only one reason why the Republican Congress has adopted a block-across-the-board policy: the President has out-thought and outmaneuvered Republicans at every turn. They know they can't win, because the President knows their jobs better than they do, sees farther down the procedural line than they can, and can predict their actions while they cannot divine his own.

Republicans simply cannot compete because of a basic philosophical flaw in their makeup. Republicans seek to exploit and evade laws and procedure. They simply do not know how to craft laws and follow procedure, and have never once tried to learn. President Obama has known and understood this from the beginning.

I have never seen a more wonderful example of how high competence can outsmart an entire political party. That is what has crushed the Republican Party, the simple fact that we know our jobs, and they don't.

[tanyev]

2. Blowback.