Without a doubt, backlash
against GOP extremism played a significant role in the president's legislative
successes. It was part of the public's response to a discernible
form of extremism that resurfaced like a recurrence of cancer during Obama's
presidency. An extremism fueled in large
part, by a familiar obsession linked to a well-known character disorder common
among the stiff-necked Archie Bunker types, closeted MILF-wannabees and other
assorted " Akinites " who
-- during the Republican presidential debates and convention -- either cheered
or booed at precisely the moment when the opposite reaction was more appropriate.
And certainly, despite Obama's
successes, all's not rosy. Gitmo is
still up and running; efforts to address global warming have been paltry; the
"crackdown" on Wall Street depressingly light-handed; efforts to regulate gun
ownership non-existent and the Bush tax cuts for the rich have managed to
survive this president's first term.
Moreover, any saintly aura enshrouding Obama's milestone accomplishments
would be considerably dulled if the president agrees to the kind of Medicare
and Social Security changes Republicans have been demanding.
Nevertheless, the transcendent
nature of the era of Obama can neither be reasonably understated or adequately embellished. In both political and social terms, it's been
an era of genuinely tangible historical milestones brought forth in large part by
way of an approach to legislative politicking that seems almost pathological in
its cageyness
The enactment of "Obamacare," for
example, toppled 40 years of stonewalled GOP resistance to government run
health care. On immigration, a clear
path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants has been established. The creation of the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau may usher in an era of consumer protection that is
contemporary to a post-Wall-Street-meltdown market, and, an historic expansion
of civil rights relating to gender appears on the way to
fruition.
Moreover, not only has Obama
appointed two pro-choice women to the Supreme Court, thus increasing the odds
against Roe v Wade being overturned, his re-election is likely to bring an end
to the conservative dream of a lasting
Supreme Court majority should one or more Justices retire before
the next election.
And perhaps the greatest
milestone is that he did it while black.
Be that as it may, Obama hardly
seems content to stand pat on a transformative agenda and just float on through
the next four years as a lame duck. Indeed
as both Parties edge nearer to the fiscal cliff, Obama appears on the verge of
completing yet another act of shrewd political maneuvering that enables the
president to address deficit recovery largely on his own terms. And through this maneuvering the president
-- at the time of this writing -- is perhaps only days away from crumbling
another pillar of conservative philosophy: the ideological barrier that surrounds a near quarter
century prohibition against raising taxes by the GOP.
"Raising rates is sort of a
partisan political trophy for Obama," admitted Sen. Lindsay Graham during a
December 10 interview on Fox News.
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