Obama Derangement Syndrome and unprecedented GOP obstruction

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last week, Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) confirmed President Obama's analysis of GOP obstructionsm. Pat Toomey confirms it: Obama is right about GOP:

President Obama is getting widely mocked by commentators and
Republicans for using the phrase “permission structure” at his presser
yesterday in the course of claiming that Republican officials are
constrained from cooperating with him because their base would see it as
a “betrayal.”

* * *

Here’s the bit that has all of the Green Lanternites out there slapping their knees and laughing uproariously:

“I cannot force Republicans to embrace those common-sense
solutions…It’s tough. Their base thinks that compromise with me is
somehow a betrayal. They’re worried about primaries. And I understand
all that. And we’re going to try to do everything we can to create a
permission structure for them to be able to do what’s going to be best
for the country. But it’s going to take some time.”

So it’s good to have a Republican Senator on record confirming that Obama is right about this.

I’m talking about Pat Toomey. The Senator from Pennsylvania didn’t
directly address Obama’s remarks, but something he said in another
context perfectly confirms the President’s diagnosis of the GOP.

Via Amanda Terkel,
Toomey admitted in an interview that expanded background checks went
down to defeat because Republicans opposed the bill out of a desire to
deny the president a victory
. Here’s what Toomey said, according to a write-up in the Times Herald:

“In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized.
There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the
president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president
wanted to do it
,” Toomey said.

That’s pretty significant. But Toomey’s subsequent effort to walk this back is in some ways even more so:

In subsequent comments, he tried to walk that remark
part-way back by noting he meant to say Republicans across the nation in
general, not just those in the Senate. “The toughest thing to do in
politics is to do the right thing when your supporters think the right
thing is something else,” Toomey said.

According to Toomey, what doomed Manchin-Toomey is that Repulicans
across the country opposed it only because the president supported it
.

Having a Republican on record confirming this is useful.

This does not bode well for comprehensive immigration reform. despite the Beltway media villagers all giving the GOP credit for wanting immigration reform because the GOP now understands the demographics and the need to appeal to Hispanic voters. In the end, denying President Obama a victory on a major policy goal is going to drive GOP oppostion to immigration reform. It is an entirely dysfunctional party.

There is also a New report that confirms GOP obstructionism is unprecedented:

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has released an important new report that details Barack Obama’s record on nominating judges during his first term. It’s no surprise: Republican obstruction against his selections was unprecedented. For example:

President Obama is the only one of the five most recent
Presidents for whom, during his first term, both the average and median
waiting time from nomination to confirmation for circuit and district
court nominees was greater than half a calendar year (i.e., more than
182 days).

A quick look at the report’s summary confirms that Obama’s nominees
have been treated more roughly than those of Presidents Reagan, Bush,
Clinton, and the other Bush.

* * *

Obama, like Ronald Reagan, had a same-party Senate majority during
his first term. He should have had among the best results over any
recent president, all things being equal.

What changed when Obama took office, however, was the extension of
the filibuster to cover every single nominee. Republicans didn’t always
vote against cloture (or even demand cloture votes), but they did demand
60 votes for every nominee. That’s brand new. It’s true that Democrats
filibustered selected judicial nominations during the George W. Bush
presidency, but only at the circuit court level, and not every single
one.

That meant that despite solid Democratic majorities and solid support
from those Democrats, Obama’s judicial approval statistics are
basically the worse of any of the recent presidents.

* * *

And remember: the losers here aren’t just the president and liberals
who want to see his judges on the bench. Ordinary people who just want
to get their legal matters taken care of promptly have suffered because
of all the vacancies on federal courts.

It’s really a disgrace. Especially those picks that were delayed for
months, only to wind up getting confirmed by unanimous votes. Especially
the foot-dragging on district court nominees. Just a disgrace.

The anti-government philosophy of the Tea-Publican Party : "Government doesn't work, and if you elect me to office, I will prove it." There is a solution: stop electing reckless and irresponsible radical Tea-Publicans to office.