NY Times:
Tea Party Activists Angry at G.O.P. Leaders
In their final days controlling the House, Democrats succeeded in passing legislation that Tea Party leaders opposed, including a bill to cover the cost of medical care for rescue workers at the site of the World Trade Center attacks, an arms-control treaty with Russia, a food safety bill and a repeal of the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military...
"This changes by degrees," Mr. Lee said. "As long as you have a Democratic president and a Democratic-controlled Senate, I don’t think there are many people who are expecting that the government’s going to be transformed overnight into something in the image of the Tea Party. That would be delusional."
The headline should have read "Tea Party Activists Angry" and leave it at that.
CNN:
President Barack Obama signed the 9/11 health bill into law in Hawaii on Sunday, White House spokesman Bill Burton said.
Obama signed the bill during his Hawaiian vacation, with no signing ceremony held. In a statement issued later, the president said he was "honored" to sign the bill, which pays for health care for responders believed to have been sickened by pollution at the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York.
Remember, Republicans deliberately blocked this (what's the going price of heroism these days?) They will forget. You won't.
USA Today:
The new Republican leaders of the House plan to hold a vote on repealing the White House's signature health care law before President Obama delivers the State of the Union address in late January, a key committee chairman said Sunday.
The repeal effort is almost certain to fail — the measure would have to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate and override a presidential veto — but the vote will send a combative message to the White House about the course ahead as the GOP takes control Wednesday of the House of Representatives.
This one, otoh, everyone knows, and no one will forget. The GOP is hostage to the tea party and can't be reasonable even if it wanted to. Thus is shown to be true the old adage that the Democrats distrust their base, but the GOP fears theirs.
WaPo:
The Republican congressman who is taking over responsibility for congressional oversight called President Obama's administration "one of the most corrupt administrations" on Sunday and predicted that the investigations he is planning over the next two years could result in about $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers.
Not all the rabid partisans are newly elected. Some have been around for a while. Giving them a majority gives them a voice. More 'elections have consequences" stuff.
Paul Krugman:
If there’s one piece of economic wisdom I hope people will grasp this year, it’s this: Even though we may finally have stopped digging, we’re still near the bottom of a very deep hole.
EJ Dionne:
From its inception, the Tea Party movement has treated the nation's great founding document not as the collection of shrewd political compromises that it is but as the equivalent of sacred scripture.
Yet as Gordon Wood, the widely admired historian of the Revolutionary era has noted, we "can recognize the extraordinary character of the Founding Fathers while also knowing that those 18th-century political leaders were not outside history. . . . They were as enmeshed in historical circumstances as we are, they had no special divine insight into politics, and their thinking was certainly not free of passion, ignorance, and foolishness."
An examination of the Constitution that views it as something other than the books of Genesis or Leviticus would be good for the country.
A good point about what's wrong with the GOP at its heart.
Robert J Samuelson:
The more upbeat of these (from, say, Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley) have the economy's growth accelerating next year to about 4 percent from less than 3 percent and the unemployment rate dropping from the present 9.8 percent to 8.6 percent by year-end. Though that is still depressingly high, it would begin to dispel the gloomy notion that the economy is permanently stuck with high joblessness and give Obama grounds for boasting that his policies drove the turnaround.
If average Americans agree, Obama's reelection prospects will improve significantly. But public opinion isn't there yet. A few weeks ago, departing White House economist Summers - who is returning to Harvard - made the case for Obama in a valedictory speech. In what he said and what he didn't, Summers mirrored the strengths and weaknesses of administration policies. This suggests a mixed verdict: Obama deserves more credit than his critics concede but less than he claims.