Waiting for lefty

According to Politico, “GOP senators [are] waiting for Obama outreach” and disappointed that none has been forthcoming:

President Barack Obama will need Republican senators to pass his ambitious agenda — and the White House has even identified the top prospects. But after months of buildup and a week since his State of the Union address, key aides on the Hill and at the White House acknowledge that even GOP senators who fit Obama’s vision of bipartisanship — Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — are all waiting to hear anything from the president.

I hope the “disappointed” Republican Senators are posturing. If not, they don’t understand what is in store for the next year and a half.

With the exception of immigration reform, where key Republicans are already talking with key Democrats (though not with President Obama directly), Obama’s goal isn’t to pass legislation or to develop bipartisan solutions to tough problems. His goal is to enable his Party to take control of the House in the next election so he can pass leftist legislation with little or no Republican support.

I don’t criticize Obama for this approach. Currently, the Republican House is a formidable obstacle to any legislation the president would deem worthy of enactment (again, with the possible exception of immigration reform). So why should Obama waste time with outreach to Republican Senators? Better to devote his efforts to figuring out how to make Republicans look bad.

Congressional Republicans, including those Senators said to be pining for presidential “outreach,” should respond in kind. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that stories like the one in Politico about that “pining” are part of such a response.

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