WP, pg1: GOP Doubts, Fears 'Post-Partisan' Obama

[DeepModem Mom]

GOP Doubts, Fears 'Post-Partisan' Obama
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 7, 2008; Page A01


Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), shown at a campaign event in Exeter, N.H., has included Republicans and independents in his campaign pitch. (Stephan Savoia/AP)

Exploiting a deep well of voter revulsion over partisan gridlock in Washington, Sen. Barack Obama is promising to do something that has not been done in modern U.S. politics: unite a coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents behind an agenda of sweeping change....

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In Washington, bipartisanship for decades has been synonymous with compromise and incrementalism. When it has worked, both parties have sacrificed some elements of ideology for modest steps forward. The Clinton White House could not win passage of universal health care, so it settled for a federal-state partnership to insure the children of the working poor. The Republican "revolutionaries" of 1994 could not abolish a Cabinet agency, such as the Education Department, so they settled for slowing the growth rate of Medicare and abolishing Congress's Office of Technology Assessment.

Obama is promising something very different, what skeptics call an oxymoron: sweeping bipartisan change.

"I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes, not incremental changes, not small changes," Obama said Saturday night. "I think that there are a whole host of Republicans, and certainly independents, who have lost trust in their government, who don't believe anybody is listening to them, who are staggering under rising costs of health care, college education, don't believe what politicians say. And we can draw those independents and some Republicans into a working coalition, a working majority for change."

Republicans in Washington view Obama's "post-partisan" political appeal with a mixture of skepticism and fear. They are skeptical, they say, because the first-term senator's thin record has shown virtually no sign of bipartisanship. They are fearful because his appeal just might work....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/06/AR2008010602402.html?hpid=topnews

[LittleBlue]

1. God I hope so. No more guns, God, and gays. K&R

Yeah I must be naive... but what's the point if we can't achieve something meaningful?