I left this as a comment on a post at Lance Mannion's place, and the cold light of day hasn't changed my mind so I'm posting it here as well.
I'm afraid I can't buy the analysis cited in that post actor212 linked to (it posits that by freezing Federal wages Obama takes a Republican bargaining chip away from them, since that's been a talking point of theirs which pleases their base mightily). I honestly think Obama really believes, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, he should have reached out more to Republicans over the past two years and had he just done so his powers of persuasion could have won the day and gotten him some votes from that side.
I think he's used to Democrats, whose party discipline is nowhere near as strong as Republicans. Hell, he could have offered each Republican Senator a few million bucks and each would still have voted against Democratic initiatives. Look at the number of meetings Senator Kyl has had with Administration officials. He's still endangering national security by refusing to go along with START, and his reasons are false and specious. Yet Obama and his crowd won't call him out on it by name, nor will Obama make a damn speech saying the Republicans are endangering our security by refusing to ratify that thing. Bush said that about Democrats every time they tried to hold up his Iraq war or modify its funding.
I think he still doesn't realize what sort of animal the opposition is. It's not a cuddly Sun Bear, it's a damn grizzly which really does want to obstruct everything he wants to do, and if the citizens of this country are hurt even further by the Republicans' actions, they don't care. I think he's going to be a single-termer unless he figures that out.
The Hopey-Changey thing isn't working. I'm more disillusioned about this guy than I ever was about Clinton.
Update: See, Mr. President? Senator McConnell writes
For that reason, we write to inform you that we will not agree to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers.What about the word "intransigence" do you not understand? Posted by Linkmeister at December 1, 2010 08:43 AM | TrackBack