Discussion for article #242754
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Excuse me, Ray. When the President tried over and over again and the GOP refused to cooperate on even things they agreed with - we had to move forward someway. Thank you, Mr. President.
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“LaHood told the Times that he was quickly disappointed after joining the
Obama administration when Democrats pushed for an economic stimulus
package without much support from Republicans.”
Well Mr Secretary it seems as if your “eyes were open wide shut” and still are evidently.
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Today’s definition of bipartisanship simply means caving to the minority party when it has a tantrum.
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Fuck you, LaHood. You’re another 20/20 hindsight pipsqueak profiteering from the party of greed, hatred, and cowardice. FUCK. YOU.
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Did you hit your head and forget 7 years of full on Republican obstructionism and the great flowering of the crazy?
No, it was all Obama fault. Someone sounds a bit bitter for Obama not trusting him enough to become part of his inner circle. Well, it’s now easy to see why he didn’t.
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“He did not, as other presidents have done, place a high value on consulting with members of Congress.”
You mean the folks yelling “You lie!” at the SOTU? Wonder why…
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gosh - - LaHood seem to be really giving his old colleagues a big pass - maybe there is another reality that LaHood should search his memory to recall.
Joe Biden says that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any cooperation on many votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators, who said, `Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ he recalls.
His informants said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had demanded unified resistance.
“The way it was characterized to me was: `For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’ ” Biden says.
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I wonder what his thoughts are on Republicans voting against & filabustering their own goddamn bills & amendments when PBO agreed with them ?
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Indeed the “intervening circumstance” was largely pure racism.
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Better call the waaahmbulance.
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I absolutely agree with Grieving4America, as well as JinNJ’s comment about what Biden has said. Bipartisanship on big signature issues such as the stimulus bill and the ACA was never going to happen. On health care reform, remember that Democrats in the Senate negotiated for months with their Republican counterparts only to eventually realize that the GOP was just not going to agree to anything. Remember also that, once the Administration took over the issue, Obama tried to work with Republican leadership in Congress only to come to the same conclusion.
I appreciate that LaHood was old school and genuinely bipartisan in his outlook; that’s why he took a Cabinet post in the Administration. But he appears to be looking to re-establish his credentials with the GOP by adopting their absurd claim that the failure of bipartisanship was Obama’s fault. And, by the way, LaHood seems to be under the impression that he was supposed to be the point person for Obama in negotiating with Republicans. I’ve never heard that, don’t think it’s accurate and, in any event, Biden, rather than LaHood, would have been the obvious choice for that role.
I don’t know what the future holds, but I firmly believe that, when viewed from a distance in the future, historians will conclude that the Republican Congressional caucus operated in a historically unprecedented obstructive manner during the Obama Administration, poisoning the well of political tradition.
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You are absolutely right. Obama’s big - almost fatal - mistake was when he failed to call out the Republican leadership at the very beginning of the Administration when he was very popular, and failing to go public with Biden’s information. For a long time, I thought it was solely Obama’s naievity, but we know know that Biden shares the blame. As to Lahood, I’d be interested to know whether he shared his concerns with Obama, since he and Obama had been friends for many years.
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LaHood was a congressman, not a senator.
Like all Republicans, LaHood is reverting to form. No surprise there. He has a book to sell for Pete’s Sake…and who’s gonna buy that shit if he doesn’t give a bunch of Republicans some red meat to chew on.
I seem to recall LaHood complaining about infrastructure an awful lot during his tenure in the Obama administration. Did he think it was President Obama that blocked any and all of those long-term investments in the country? If so, he’s more bent then I had originally thought.
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. . . that started with the Republican vow on January 20, 2009, to make Obama a one-term president?
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"And, boom, they made a decision that they were going to pass economic stimulus with just Democratic votes. That was the beginning of the end of bipartisanship.”
He left out the part where the Obama administration agreed to tax cuts as 40% of the stimulus as a concession to Republicans.
The reason Republicans are always accusing President Obama of “refusing to compromise” is because they’re incapable of recognizing that meeting them halfway is usually the President’s opening position.
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TPM:
“I do not believe the White House ever committed fully to a genuine bipartisan approach to policy making, despite the president’s words to the contrary,” he [Ray LaHood] wrote, according to the Times.
It’s a little difficult to pursue a genuine bipartisan approach when the opposing party questions (in bad faith) whether you were even born in the country, declares that its top priority is not helping Americans but, instead, ensuring that you don’t get a second term, and sets itself in opposition to every goal and policy you attempt to advance.
So, LaHood, fuck you and the treasonous party you rode in on.
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Ray LaHood: Proving once again that among Republicans “Tribal Affinity” is more important than truth, justice, or history.
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LaHood is as delusional as all the republicans. The “beginning of the end of bipartisanship”
started the day Obama was elected when republicans banded to together to make
Obama a one term president and vowed to stop everything the president tried to
do to fix the horrific economy they created.
So Ray how is it Obama’s fault no republicans signed onto the stimulus
that saved our country even after the President included things in the stimulus
to get republican votes. If LaHood was
so dismayed why didn’t he quit. BTW Sen Specter
voted for Stimulus so it was bipartisan.
How did LaHood feel about republicans who voted no still ask for stimulus
funds
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/35898519/ns/us_news-the_stimulus_tracker
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