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Obama’s Indecision in War on Terrorism is Dangerous
Tweet Share on Facebook January 29, 2010 Comment (29)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Obama administration has seemed somewhat indecisive of late about key elements of the war on terror. It was not a subject that received a great deal of attention in his remarks to the Congress Wednesday night but it is a subject that is very much on the minds of everyone else. "In the wake of the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound airliner, defending the country from future terrorist attacks," the Pew Research Center said in a report released earlier this week, remains a top priority for the American people.
Obama referenced aspects of the war on terror just a handful of times, giving it about the same degree of attention as he gave to the use of the filibuster by Senate Republicans and to upbraiding members of the United States Supreme Court over their recent decision regarding campaign finance laws and the First Amendment.
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Obama Seemed Small in State of the Union Address
Tweet Share on Facebook January 28, 2010 Comment (28)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
If President Barack Obama had a hard time with the State of the Union Wednesday night--if it made him seem small or did not come across well in every place--it is because his predecessor is such a hard act to follow. By predecessor I don't mean George W. Bush--who famously remarked that his lips were the place that words went to die--but Barack Obama the candidate, whose masterful delivery of soaring rhetoric propelled him past Hillary Clinton and John McCain and into the White House.
Obama was weakest at those points during the speech in which he was forced to defend his own actions and to talk about specifics. Or, if you prefer, when he had to talk like a president and not a candidate for office. In several places he appeared bogged down in the details of the policies he was announcing, when it was not so easy to draw contrasts or to present things as a choice between competing visions.
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A Hillary Clinton Primary Challenge to Obama in 2012?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 27, 2010 Comment (364)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
When President Barack Obama asked New York Sen. Hillary Clinton to join his cabinet as secretary of state, the move was widely praised. Clinton, his principal rival for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, added a measure of gravitas to his team of advisers and would, it was suggested, help unite the president's party at a time the Republicans appeared to be on the verge of complete collapse.
At the time, comparisons were made to Abraham Lincoln. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin recounts in her book Team of Rivals how the 16th president of the United States invited others who held leadership claims on the new Republican Party into his cabinet in an effort to present a united front. But Lincoln's decision to invite his rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination--William H. Seward, Edward Bates, and Salmon P. Chase--into his administration was also a matter of political preservation. Their inclusion in the cabinet kept them inside the tent looking out rather than outside the tent looking in, forcing an alliance with Lincoln as the Union threatened to come apart.
It will be up to history to judge whether Obama's selection of Clinton falls in the same category. Whether it does or not depends on what Clinton decides to do.
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The Obama Spending Freeze is Simply Not Credible
Tweet Share on Facebook January 26, 2010 Comment (12)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Following a string of embarrassing electoral and political defeats, the president has signaled major changes are coming. He is no longer going to be "Your Mama's Obama"--the cool, smooth, rational, post-partisan candidate for president the country was introduced to in 2008. That's out the window in favor of Obama 2.0, the populist firebrand, "fighter for you" who wants to lead a charge rather than simply effect change.
It's a bold effort to redefine what any number of polls, including the Gallup presidential tracking poll, indicate is a failing but not yet unredeemable presidency. Most all the administration's key legislative initiatives have hit the wall in Congress, with members of the president's party increasingly looking for the exits rather than for another term. Obama's response to this has been to change the rhetoric rather than the reality, starting with his new proposal to freeze non-defense, non-security related federal discretionary spending for the next three years.
The image of Obama as a reborn budget cutter as the concluding act of an almost year-long spending binge that would have made Bacchus blush is simply not credible, as Congressional Republicans were quick to point out.
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Obama Can’t Tap Voter Anger Because It's Directed at Him
Tweet Share on Facebook January 25, 2010 Comment (19)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Now that the voters in Massachusetts have put him on the ropes, President Barack Obama is spoiling for a fight. Speaking last week in Elyria, Ohio, the president, the New York Times reported, used some version of the word "fight" more than 20 times as he railed against the big banks, Wall Street, joblessness, and the economic downturn that has hit the nation hard.
As a newly-minted populist, Obama is hoping to win back the support of the independents and the "Reagan Democrats" who, over his first year in the White House, have become steadily less enthusiastic about his performance in office. The president, as the numbers reflect, has been losing the support of the center. On Monday, the Gallup organization released a new survey that shows the nation's first postpartisan president is an extremely polarizing figure despite an average job approval rating of 57 percent for his first year in office. Underneath that, however, is a lot of bad news.
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Republicans Mustn't Match Democrats' Arrogance in Victory
Tweet Share on Facebook January 22, 2010 Comment (11)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats have fallen flat on their face, a victim of their own arrogance. Believing their own press clippings, the Democrats misinterpreted the 2008 election as a realigning mandate in support of fundamental, major changes in the way America is governed as well as an endorsement of the need to grow substantially the size and scope of government. In point of fact it was neither of those things. The 2008 platform on which they ran was long on slogans and concepts and short on actual ideas for governing.
It is true that America voted for change--but not the change that Obama and the Democrats began to offer once elected.
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Scott Brown Should Take His Senate Seat Immediately
Tweet Share on Facebook January 20, 2010 Comment (105)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Democrats are in a conundrum. Tuesday's stunning victory by Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special Senate election has changed the mathematics of the future. Previously, with 57 Democrats and two independents behind him, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could overcome GOP efforts to filibuster the healthcare bill.
With Brown in the Senate, Reid's natural coalition becomes one vote short of 60, empowering the Republicans to block the bill--but only if they all stick together. For Reid and for the White House, this creates an almost irresistible temptation to slow the seating of Brown while trying to rush the healthcare bill to President Barack Obama's desk while they still have the votes to override the filibuster.
It's a bad idea.
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Joe Biden's Filibuster Hypocrisy
Tweet Share on Facebook January 19, 2010 Comment (10)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Vice President Joe Biden has a short memory.
While speaking Sunday at a fundraising event in Florida, the vice president denounced the Republicans' use of the filibuster to block key Democratic initiatives in the U.S. Senate. "As long as I have served," Politico quoted Biden as saying, "I've never seen, as my uncle once said, the Constitution stood on its head as they've done. This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators." Adding, "No democracy has survived needing a supermajority," Biden described the parliamentary tactics of the GOP as putting what the paper said was "a dangerous new roadblock in the way of American government."
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Obama Massachusetts Campaign Swing Could Backfire, Help Brown
Tweet Share on Facebook January 15, 2010 Comment (35)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The special election to fill the seat left vacant when Massachusetts Democrat Edward M. Kennedy shuffled off his mortal coil is coming down to the wire. In a state not known for competitive contests, Republican State Sen. Scott Brown is giving Democrat Attorney General Martha Coakley more than a run for her money.
• A one-day poll conducted for Pajamas Media of nearly 1,000 likely Massachusetts voters out Friday showed Brown ahead by an amazing 15 points, well outside the slightly better than three percent margin of error.
• Suffolk University has Brown up by four--50 percent to 46 percent--in its Thursday poll of 500 registered voters.
• Monday's poll of 1,000 likely voters by Scott Rasmussen had Coakley up by two but, importantly, under 50.
Pollster.com now has the average at 50.3 percent for Brown and Coakley at 46.8 percen, with almost all the late polls show Brown gaining and Coakley fading. Even the Democratic Blue Mass Group/Research 2000 poll of January 13, which shows Coakley leading 49 to 41 among 500 likely voters surveyed over two days, has Brown winning half the independents versus 39 percent for Coakley.
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State Attorneys General Say Health Reform Plan Unconstitutional
Tweet Share on Facebook January 14, 2010 Comment (5)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, a former U.S. attorney who hopes to be the Palmetto State's next governor, has an appointment with destiny.
Following the passage of the Senate version of a healthcare bill, McMaster put together a bipartisan coalition consisting of more than a dozen state attorneys general to fight the bill, arguing that a political payoff intended to win the support of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson included in the final Senate bill may provide sufficient reason for a federal judge to declare the whole thing unconstitutional.
The provision that has McMaster and his colleagues up in arms affords special treatment to Nebraska, unique among all the states, as it pertains to the federal Medicaid program. "It has been reported," McMaster and the others said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that Nelson's vote in favor of the Senate's version of the bill "was secured only after striking a deal that the federal government would bear the cost of newly eligible Nebraska Medicaid enrollees."
