This kind of crap (linking the payroll tax cut extension to the Keystone XL pipeline) is precisely why we’d be better off as a nation if Obama had come to the Rose Garden back on Day Two and announced his immutable opposition to wind power, trains, mass transit of any kind, single payer health care, mortgage adjustments and cram-down, and massive civil and criminal penalties for the banksters in general and claw-back of Wall Street salaries specifically. Had he done so, odds are at least two or three of these items would have gotten done per “give us x or we destroy the country” showdowns. With a heavy heart he’d show up and sign the dreaded bill(s). By now he’d have a legislative record on par with the New Deal and the Great Society and would be hard pressed to find new things to “oppose.”
We are in an era in which whatever the President is for, the GOP is against. If it angers the dirty fucking hippies, then so much the better. They don’t even hide it anymore. Here’s Ohio’s Representative Jim Jordan:
“Frankly, the fact that the president doesn’t like [the Keystone XL project] makes me like it even more’’
It is long past time to plan accordingly and make them pay political prices for this. Over and over again. Start picking the things they love the most and convert them into policy proposals that you can live with or even like. Come out for them. Propose the legislation. Force votes. Make ads about the inevitable “flip flop” in their districts. All 50 states. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Lemkin 