From www.huffingtonpost.com
"Daily Kos" founder Markos Moulitsas warned President Obama that the netroots were growing tired of the administration's foundering efforts to deliver health care reform, and that the last couple months have left them "not very hopeful" about the White House living up to a major theme of their presidential campaign:
We all, at the end of the day, want Obama to do the right thing, but we're not very hopeful given the last couple months. Given the lack of message discipline from the White House. Given the vast number of Democrats that are willing to compromise against each other. They're not even negotiating with Republicans; they're negotiating against each other. And really when you have a campaign for the presidency that was built on hope and on getting rid of cynicism, there would be no greater return of cynicism than to show that the insurance companies and lobbyists have won this debate.
I certainly agree with Markos on the whole health care fiasco that has been allowed to happen. And that's the problem...it's been allowed to happen. It seems that candidate Obama was serious about wanting to end partisan fighting in Washington. So much so that President Obama has been rolled time after time by the well-disciplined Republican noise machine. He has allowed himself to be defined by his opponents. And the lack of a vigorous push back by him and his administration is even more frustrating and disappointing. The "take no prisoners" philosophy that vaulted Obama from being a relatively unknown junior senator to the presidency of the United States seems to have been replaced with a "take no offense" philosophy.
The steely discipline of the Obama Armada that sank the candidacy of Hillary Clinton (Hillary Clinton!) and defeated the best efforts of the Republicans (of course Sarah Palin proved to be the dud torpedo in that campaign) has sunk beneath the waves of public opinion. The quick response team that countered every attack against the Obama campaign has apparently been moth-balled. Where once the airwaves were swamped with Obama surrogates who appeared at a moment's notice, we now have the somewhat somnolent and soft-spoken responses of Robert Gibbs. Not good enough. The problems the Obama administration now face are of their own making.
Obama will never never never succeed in garnering the support of the Republicans in Congress save for the handful of Republican "moderates" (an endangered species by the way) like Snow and Collins. Losing the support of your own base in pursuit of the unachievable by caving to the demands of the opposition is a very poor trade-off indeed. And the reality is that Obama could give them everything they ask for and in the end they would still say no. Do you think that Rush Limbaugh was just being hyperbolic when he said he wanted Obama to fail? Hardly. He was merely voicing the goal of the Republican party. Obama doesn't seem to realize that he is fighting an all-out war here. And the Republicans are much more adept at guerrilla warfare than we are.
No. No more Mr. Nice Guy. It's time for the savvy politico that Obama is to re-emerge. It's time to get in their faces. It's time to win back the hearts and minds of those who have become disheartened by the last few months of inaction and meekness. I am reminded of the line from the movie "The Untouchables" when Sean Connery's character is tutoring the neophyte Ness in the ways of the real world.
"They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!"
Fired up!...Ready to go!