[jeffkrol]

I have a hard time explaining, other than race, why, before the ink was dry on his inauguration papers, half of Congress was gunning for him...........it was unprecedented in my memory.....
Actually I have to agree a bit w/ Nesster.. same thing MIGHT have happened w/ Hillary BUT it would have been much more subtle, taken much more time and would have been quite the dance.

[Nesster]

a) Fox b) Bill Clinton. Deep down you know they'd have been gunning for Hillary as well. Or nearly any Democrat. Perhaps it is the anguish under Bush Jr. that the Republicans every now and then admit to feeling, that found a target in the next Democrat to take office.

And, we have to go back to Bush/Gore and to reflect, however bad it still feels to Dems, what it -and all the criticism over it- may have done to the Republican psyche.

[shooz]

It's more like, they just don't like us.
Just those 1%ers.

Obama Hate Has Driven Republicans To Humiliate America

[GeneV]

a) Fox b) Bill Clinton. Deep down you know they'd have been gunning for Hillary as well. Or nearly any Democrat. Perhaps it is the anguish under Bush Jr. that the Republicans every now and then admit to feeling, that found a target in the next Democrat to take office.

And, we have to go back to Bush/Gore and to reflect, however bad it still feels to Dems, what it -and all the criticism over it- may have done to the Republican psyche.

True. The bit about it not being him, but his politics is very questionable. Bill Clinton was about as close to a republican as a Democratic president gets, but he was hated with such passion.

[Nesster]

Bill Clinton was about as close to a republican as a Democratic president gets, but he was hated with such passion.

You have to remember the psychology of the thing - Republicans more than most seem to consider elections a 'game' to be won. Nothing, NOTHING irks them more than someone else winning, especially using their ideology. It's not just that a Dem wins, it's that a Dem wins wrapped in a Flag, and expressing things that actually make sense to a Republican. Oooooh, that brings on the big resentments.

Kind of like, the last truly liberal president was Nixon - and don't we dems loooove to still hate him! if we were around back then...

[magkelly]

Wait a minute, you'd consider Nixon a liberal????

[stevewig]

Wait a minute, you'd consider Nixon a liberal????

In some respects that case could be made - from the extremist right position that the current Republican Party has taken.

Additionally, he attempted to introduce a National Health plan.

[magkelly]

I'd consider Nixon pretty darned conservative myself, health plan idea notwithstanding. I have to admit the idea that someone might consider him one really made me blink there for a second.

[Nesster]

He is more liberal than any president after him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/opinion/the-madman-theory.html?_r=1&scp=1&...eral&st=Search

In other words, it’s a pity Barack Obama isn’t more like Richard Nixon. I think of Nixon every year around now, as another anniversary of his resignation (Tuesday the 9th) rolls around. President Nixon famously tried convincing the Communists that he might literally go nuclear if they didn’t behave. “I call it the Madman Theory,” he explained to his chief of staff. “I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war.”

Of course, a lot of us swooned over Obama partly because he seemed so prudent, straightforward and even-keeled. But now, with Republicans spectacularly applying the Madman Theory for the first time in domestic politics, Obama’s nonconfrontational reasonableness isn’t looking like such a virtue.

It’s frustrating. We’ve had presidents who were intelligent and progressive but also cynical and ruthless when necessary. Effective, tough-minded, visionary liberals such as F.D.R., Clinton ... and Nixon.

In popular imagination, Nixon remains nothing but a great goblin — scowling bomber of Southeast Asia, panderer to fear and racism, paranoid anti-Semite, dispatcher of burglars — but the truth is, he governed further to the left than any president who followed him. The overreaching Euro-socialist nanny state that today’s Republicans despise? That blossomed in the Nixon administration.

Spending on social services doubled, and military budgets actually decreased. He oversaw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. His administration was the first to encourage and enable American Indian tribal autonomy. He quadrupled the staff of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, almost tripled federal outlays for civil rights and began affirmative action in federal hiring. He supported the Equal Rights Amendment and signed Title IX, the law granting equality to female student athletes. One of his Supreme Court appointees wrote the Roe v. Wade decision.

Nixon made Social Security cost-of-living increases automatic, expanded food stamps and started Supplemental Security Income for the disabled and elderly poor. It helped, of course, that Democrats controlled the House and Senate. But it was the president, not Congress, who proposed a universal health insurance plan and a transformation of welfare that would have set a guaranteed minimum income and allowed men to remain with their welfare-recipient families. It was Nixon who radically intervened in the free market by imposing wage and price controls, launched détente with the Soviets, normalized relations with Mao’s China and let the Communists win in Vietnam.

And, for good measure, the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts grew sixfold, by far the biggest increase by any president.

The idea of Nixon — Nixon? — as a de facto liberal provokes cognitive dissonance, especially among people over 50. Facts notwithstanding, they refuse to buy it, as if they’ve been fooled by a parlor trick. But the only trick involved is judging Nixon circa 1970 by the ideological standards of 2011.

[reeftool]

It was OK because Nixon was a Republican just like it was OK that Bush Jr. spent taxpayers money like an out of control schoolgirl and raised the debt limit several times to keep it up. Our economy was spiraling down in the final months of the Bush administration and it's no accident that the economy is tanking again just a few months after Republican's gained control of the House. This blind loyalty to the party totally amazes me.

[GeneV]

He is more liberal than any president after him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/opinion/the-madman-theory.html?_r=1&scp=1&...eral&st=Search

Exactly.

[cardinal43]

I think as a politician he's untrustworthy, that he lies, that he tends to say and do things that he probably shouldn't in order to get his way. As a president I think he's less than capable and that come the next election I hope he will be out of the Oval Office.

Do you seriously think that Bachman, Romney, Palin, Trump, Paul, Ginghrich, Pawlenty, et.al (take your pick)......will be any different? Really?

[magkelly]

No, but that doesn't change the fact that Obama is all that.

[shooz]

What was Bush?

[cardinal43]

No, but that doesn't change the fact that Obama is all that.

OK, so what's the point? It seems you are saying Obama sucks as President, and so would the other side. What's the answer? I don't know -- just asking.