Right Minded Online

Not long after his recent State of the Union speech, President Obama chastised the GOP as the party of “no” and demanded, “I want the Republicans off the sidelines. I want them to work with us to solve problems. I don’t want an attitude ‘If Obama loses, then we win.’ I mean, that can’t be a platform. … All of us should be rooting for each other.”

Days later, President Obama got even testier. He chastised Republicans for opposing him on health care, economic stimulus, and other major issues, and once again complained that a GOP-driven “politics of no” was blocking action on bills that could help Americans obtain jobs and health care.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Democrats currently hold a 256-178 majority in the House of Representatives and a 59-41 majority in the Senate. Before the seating of Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) last Thursday, the GOP simply didn’t have the votes to block much of anything. So blaming the GOP for blocking Obama’s agenda is simply passing the buck. Believe me, I wish the GOP could take credit for the failures of the Obama administration, but the buck stops with Obama.

At any rate, isn’t it a bit ironic for President Obama to demand that Republicans cross the aisle to help enact his agenda? How many times did Senator Obama cross the aisle to help President Bush enact his agenda?

President Obama rode into office on the lofty platitudes of hope and change. He was the post-partisan, post-racial candidate who was going to get the world to like us again, end the partisan bickering in Washington, heal our broken souls, and lower the sea levels. But the truth is, not only has the Great Unifier failed to unite the country, he can’t even unite his own party.

President Obama’s signature legislation, ObamaCare, is on life support after Scott Brown’s stunning victory last month in Massachusetts ended the Democrats’ year-old filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. The Congress had every opportunity to enact ObamaCare. The House passed its own version last fall, one that contained a public option. In the Senate, though, Harry Reid couldn’t get 60 senators to support a public option, so the Senate passed its own bill without a public option. Nancy Pelosi has already stated that she doesn’t have the votes in the House to pass the Senate’s bill, and the Senate doesn’t have the votes to break a filibuster anymore, so, despite the brave faces they wear in public, the Democrats are in complete disarray.

So President Obama’s demand that Republicans sell out their own values and ideas and take up his mantra is rooted in two realities.

First, he can’t unite his own party, so President Obama would need to peel off a few Republican votes here and there to pass his agenda.

But there’s also a second reason. President Obama and the Democrats are working directly against the sentiments of the American people. Most of us don’t want what they’re offering. As evidenced by recent GOP victories in three states that Obama won in 2008 (Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts), the voters are rejecting liberalism.

By continuing to pursue ObamaCare, Democrats have shown they don’t care what we think. They can read the polls. They know they’re setting themselves up for a drubbing come November. They got a pre-taste of that just last month. So President Obama wants the GOP to join him in order that both parties share the blame, and not just the Democrats. In other words, President Obama is demanding that the GOP jump onto his own sinking ship, and he’s trying to goad Republicans by calling them the party of “no,” as though saying “no” to the Democrats’ disastrous legislative agenda is a bad thing.

The U.S. has the greatest health care system in the world. Democrats want to destroy it by having the federal government take over and run the health care industry. To that, we Republicans say “no.” We don’t accept the premise that we need health care reform.

Global warming is a hoax designed to give government an excuse to raise taxes and diminish our economic freedom and individual liberties. Cap-and-trade is based on the global warming hoax. To that, we Republicans say “no.” We don’t accept the premise that passing legislation, growing government, and raising taxes can change the weather.

We are in the worst recession since Jimmy Carter. There only two things government can do to help ease a recession: cut taxes and get government out of the way of the private sector. President Obama and the Democrats are doing the opposite. They have meddled incessantly with the private sector: banks, insurance companies, the automobile industry, the mortgage industry, Wall Street, etc. They have passed bills designed to stimulate the economy, so they say, but in reality have represented nothing more than huge government spending sprees. And they want to raise taxes on top of all that. To that, we Republicans say “no.” We don’t accept the premise that massive government spending of borrowed money improves the economy — quite the opposite, in fact.

So President Obama can grandstand and shift blame to the minority party all he wants, but his failures are all his own. The voters see what’s going on in Washington, and, in a smattering of off-year elections, they’ve already tossed out Democrats in states where Democrats have traditionally done well. The GOP would be wise to continue to articulate conservatism, step aside, and let the Democrats jump off the cliff by themselves.