Obama is recalibrating his role as President. He is moving away from conciliator in chief and accepting his role as a partisan. We live in a partisan country and I think Obama is tired of getting his hand chewed off everytime he extends it to conservatives. It's nice to see him at least put the gloves on and start taking the fight to the right.
I love electoral politics. Say what you want about Obama's legislation but when it comes to campaigning Obama may be the biggest talent we seen since Bill Clinton. In fact I would argue that Obama is a better campaigner than Clinton because he beat Hillary.
This week Obama has been smacking conservatives right in the chops. He is naming names and using thier own words against them. Take the recent idiotic comment by Boehner on Wall Street reform. Boehner said "wall street reform is like using a nuke to kill an ant". Obama has charismatically repeated the Boehner quote to great effect then followed up with the reality that the collapse of the economey is very real to Americans and very painful.
He has been repeated the Barton appology to BP and reminding Americans that BP is the culprit and that the real tragedy is the destruction of the gulf coast environment and the damage to gulf micro-economy.
I have long maintained that the GOP decision to just say no rather than recalibrate carried two big risks. 1) If Obama was able to turn the economy around he could prove that conservatives are wrong and 2) the GOP would have nothing new to run on. Conservatives have tried to obfuscate thier lack of ideas with attacks on Obama. They have done a great job since last summer. Health Care reform gave them an opportunity to attack without conscience. They never offered ideas, only criticism. It's nice to see Obama calling them out on it. Give Obama 2 more years with a Dem house and this economy will turn around, then the GOP will be mortally wounded.
If Dem's and thereby progressives are to have any chance at retaining control of congress they need Obama to get out on the trail and jab at the conservatives. I am relieved to see Obama taking a partisan stand right now and I believe this direct assault on conservatives is right in his wheelhouse.
By the way, if Obama loses the house he will also lose subpeona power and you can bet that Darrell Issa has counteless subpeonas stacked up to shove at Obama. If you care at all about your country, now is the time to start working to get your local Dem congressperson elected.