"Obama's Greatest Triumph"

[kpete]

How Barack Obama Destroyed the Republican Party
By Martin Longman

.........

Barack Obama will retire a happy man. He is now close to destroying his political enemies---the Republican Party, the American conservative movement and the public-policy legacy of Ronald Reagan.

Today, the last men standing amidst the debris of the Republican presidential competition are Donald Trump, a political independent who is using the Republican Party like an Uber car; Ted Cruz, who used the Republican Party as a footstool; and John Kasich, a remnant of the Reagan revolution, who is being told by Republicans to quit.

History may quibble, but this death-spiral began with Barack Obama's health-care summit at Blair House on Feb. 25, 2010... That meeting was the last good-faith event in the Obama presidency. Barack Obama killed politics in Washington that day, because he had no use for it, and has said so many times. The Democrats survived the Obama desert by going to ground. But frustrated Republicans outside Congress eventually started tearing each other apart.

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They thought they’d get more short-term bang for the buck by encouraging the Tea Party and the Birthers (including Trump). And they did.

And now their long-term reward is “Barack Obama will retire a happy man. He is now close to destroying his political enemies—the Republican Party, the American conservative movement and the public-policy legacy of Ronald Reagan.”


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MORE:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-greatest-triumph-1459379804
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-greatest-triumph-1459379804http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2016_03/how_barack_obama_destroyed_the060108.php

[malaise]

1. Do ReTHUGs ever take responsibility for their own

undiluted fuckry????

[JackInGreen]

2. Only when they're caught and have no choice

then it's apologize, bathe in the blood of christ, and back to business as usual.

[malaise]

3. Nicely stated

[randome]

4. He was the right man at the right time. And he knows it.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

5. Interesting spin. Meanwhile, they've been cleaning our clocks and redistricting. Did he also tear

the Democratic Party asunder?

[bemildred]

6. The Republican Party has been destroying itself for some time now.

All Obama has ever done to them is stand out of the way and let them be themselves.

[Nitram]

7. Obama gave them the rope and they hanged themselves.

Got them out on a limb and sawed off the branch.

[Populist_Prole]

8. Only to move rightward to fill the void that was created

The far right hanged themselves. The GOP has been effectively replaced by the DLC/Third-Way as the "center".

[Nitram]

11. No, prole, that's not what happened.

Your Third Way meme is as old as the hills and twice as dry.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. "but this death-spiral began with Barack Obama's health-care summit"

It began before that, when they made a pact on the 2008 Inaugural eve, to block everything he proposed - and basically threw everything they coveted, including Reagan, under the bus to try to make it happen.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-republicans-plan-for-the-new-president/

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/03/The-Conspiracy-to-Commit-Legislative-Constipation

[MisterP]

10. 11 Governors, 13 Senators, 69 Reps, 913 state seats, and Ds left with 26% of the electorate

as a party and as a country we can't AFFORD to push such delirious hopes