After facing many years of stringent obstructionism and historically unprecedented levels of disrespect from congressional Republicans, President Obama was relatively charitable in his final State of the Union address while discussing the hyper-partisan politics that long ago took over Washington. The president called on his audience to "fix our politics" by restoring "basic bonds of trust between... citizens" -- something that was seemingly lost when right-wingers began accusing the President of being a closet-Muslim who was born in Kenya. He continued:
"[Democracy] doesn't work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice, or that our political opponents are unpatriotic. Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise; or when even basic facts are contested, and we listen only to those who agree with us... It's one of the few regrets of my presidency - that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better... There's no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I'll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office."
Right-wing commentators did not take kindly to the Presidents humility. "The president is either utterly unaware of or unwilling to admit his own role in perpetuating divisiveness and polarization," opined conservative columnist, Jennifer Rubin, in a hasty, late-night screed that may as well have been written on Mars. "Instead of compromise and conciliation," she continued, "he rebuffed a "grand bargain" and jammed through Obamacare on a party-line vote and abused executive power to go around Congress on immigration, guns and the environment."
The only problem with this line of thinking is that there was never any "grand bargain" to be made with Republicans. From day one, the GOP wanted only to stop the president from enacting his "socialist" agenda. "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president," remarked the current Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Kt), back in 2010. What is particularly ironic is that the policies that Rubin lists above are not "left-wing" or radical by any stretch of the imagination.
Indeed, the abhorred Obamacare -- which, after more than 50 previous attempts, was finally repealed by Republicans last week, with absolutely no plan of their own -- is a centrist and formerly Republican model (which may explain why they have no plan to replace it). It was the right-wing Heritage Foundation that first put forth an individual mandate model as an alternative to a publicly-funded model, which is found in the majority of other industrialized nations. Before this reform became "Obamacare," it was "Romneycare," named after former Governor of Massachusetts and 2012 Republican challenger to Obama, Mitt Romney. When Romney signed "Romneycare" into law, he was praised by the Heritage Foundation for building a "patient-centered" healthcare market. As far as I know, Obama has yet to receive such praise from the folks at Heritage. Mother Jones put together a helpful list of top Republicans who supported Obamacare before it became Obamacare.
It appears that it is not so much the policies, but the man (and party) supporting them, that earns universal condemnation from Republicans. Consider another policy that Rubin indignantly lists: Obama's recent executive actions on gun control. These measures, which include closing the gun-show loophole -- something that has somewhere around 80-90 percent support from Americans -- and making the background check system more efficient, are widely considered to be modest measures.
Indeed, there's a good chance that Republican saint, Ronald Reagan, would have supported them, as he did the Brady Bill and the 1994 ban on assault weapons. "Every year, an average of 9,200 Americans are murdered by handguns, according to Department of Justice statistics. This does not include suicides or the tens of thousands of robberies, rapes and assaults committed with handguns. This level of violence must be stopped." While this may sound like Obama, it was written by Ronald Reagan in a 1991 New York Times editorial.
The list goes on and on. Before Obama entered office, debt was no big deal for many Republicans. "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," said Vice President Dick Cheney back in 2002, while recalling President Reagan's tripling of the debt from $900 billion to almost $3 trillion, after demanding tax cuts for the wealthy and increasing military spending. And what about Immigration reform? Same story. In 1986, Reagan signed the bipartisan Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which created a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. As many others have pointed out (including Reagan's own daughter), Reagan wouldn't stand a chance in today's extremist GOP.
Beyond these sudden and dramatic shifts in policy, Republicans have done their very best to ensure the Obama administration remain paralyzed. The amount of time it has taken for Obama's judicial nominees to be confirmed, for example, has been unprecedented compared to his predecessors. Going back to George H.W. Bush, who had to deal with a Democratic congress, judicial nominees were almost immediately confirmed within a few days. The wait jumped under Clinton, plateaued under Bush Jr., and skyrocketed under Obama to a delay of about 80 days on average.
This is not just a case of "both parties do it." No doubt, the Democratic party has its partisan ways, but the GOP has taken party politics to a whole new level. Republicans never had any intention of compromising with the Obama administration or Democrats. From day one, partisan politics have ruled, and obstructing Obama was the prime goal, as the above quote from McConnell reveals. Obama's desire to "fix politics" sounds good and noble, but nothing is going to be repaired until the people throw the zealots who currently occupy Congress out onto the street.