Obama sharpens language against House GOP

[Omaha Steve]

Source: CBS


By Lindsey Boerma

(CBS News) Tossing aside friendlier language from weeks past, President Obama for the second time used his weekly address to urge House Republicans to vote the "right way" on a bill to extend middle class tax cuts.

Whether the "typical family" will be hit with $2,200 in tax hikes next year now rests in the Republican-controlled House, the president said, lauding the Senate's passage this week of his plan to extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for American families making less than $250,000 a year. "If 218 Members of the House vote the right way, 98 percent of American families and 97 percent of small business owners will have the certainty of knowing that that their income taxes will not go up next year," he said.

While his message was not unfamiliar (he delivered similar remarks two weeks ago), Mr. Obama's language was noticeably more aggressive. Whereas his prior plea recognized House Republicans and presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney as having "different" economic ideas from his own, this week he said their "top-down" approach is flat-out "wrong," holding up the contrasting plans as props.

But while the president chided Congress for "holding these tax cuts hostage," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, charged Mr. Obama in the Republicans' weekly address with "holding America's economy hostage."

FULL story and video at link.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57481844-503544/obama-sharpens-language-against-house-gop/

[Zoeisright]

1. Should have been sharp with them all along.

[agent46]

2. His rhetoric

has always been tepid and polite while he's addressing the fascist savages "across the aisle". Maybe he's not so able to distance himself from their actual corporatist sentiments. Either that or he's tone deaf to the urgency of the situation.

[Voice for Peace]

6. I think he came into office genuinely naive about these people

because he does fundamentally believe that people are good
and that you can find common ground with anyone, if you
try.

So he has been consistently respectful in that pursuit.

[Poll_Blind]

3. Most days it's like he's trying to prove a point so thoroughly he forgets what the goal is.

I have never seen a president in my lifetime, nor can I recall reading about one, who spent so much time going out of his way A) to praise the opposition (see almost any full campaign speech, Re: Ronald Regan), B) Make a point to obliquely chastise his own party by including them in his complaints about the GOP- and C) Generally avoided the issue of absolutely how obstructionist the GOP has been to achieving his goals as president and D) had so little control over House leadership and a lack of general connection with the rank and file in his party.

This is Third Way triangulation on a scale which I think leaves the realm of "Full-Scale Proof of Concept" and careens of into absurdity. The pieces in this particular game of 14-dimensional chess have long since left the board.

Even here, in this story, the way he defensively relates how much obstructionism has occurred tones down the GOP's responsibility to his audience more than it does show how whatever he is. And when I say audience, that should be in quotes because we're talking about his weekly address. Typical response to this kid-glove treatment in Orrin Hatch's vitriolic response, too. It's like the same ineffective shit over and over in hopes that the GOP will...what?...like him? See his way? I have no idea what he thinks this is going to achieve based on what it has achieved (or failed to) so far.

I was kind of vainly hoping that the "shellacking" we got in 2010 would have...hell, I dunno...stirred him to approach the situation differently.

PB

[Don C. Nuttin]

4. not a dime's worth of difference

A revealing -if poisonous- thread in the last sentence of this article has Senator Hatch charging "Mr." Obama with holding America's economy hostage.

A thread like that appears in virtually every article coming out of Washington on the work of the Congress.

What it underlines is the lameness of the well-worn insider narrative that Republican moderates like Hatch staunching teabagger challenges is somehow consequential in relationship to the Republican Congressional rejection of the 2008 Presidential election.

There is not a dime's worth of difference.

[DallasNE]

5. Hatch Has Everything Backwards

But then, that is par for the course. What is "holding America's economy hostage" is the failure of House Republicans to pass any of the jobs creation bills Obama has submitted to Congress. Bills the CBO has said would create 3 million new jobs. But that is only marginally tied to addressing the tax issue that otherwise expires at the end of the year and the subject of Obama's remarks.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

7. The Dems have got to make every voter know that 400 people own this country & have taken it hostage.

[SoapBox]

8. Hatch = Idiot

...wasn't it Hatch that waved around "Valley of the Dolls" during the Thomas hearings?

...'nuff said.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. "Mr. Obama's language was noticeably more aggressive."

Translation - "He is becoming TheAngryBlackMan™ and we're not going to have that fellow Anglo-Saxons. Right?".