Insurrectionist Tea-Publicans: It’s all Obama’s fault!

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

When Abraham Lincoln ran for president in 1860, he ran on a promise of preserving the Union. The Republican
platform in 1860 denounced threats of disunion as avowals of treason.

During the interegnum between Lincoln's election victory in November 1860 and his Inauguration in March 1861, seven southern states voted for acts of secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, South Carolina, the first shots of the Civil War. Lincoln called for a volunteer army from each state to recapture Fort Sumter, and four more southern states voted for acts of secession and joined the Confederacy.

All of this occurred within the first two months of Lincoln's presidency. So was Lincoln a failure because he failed to preserve the Union as he had promised during his campaign in 1860?

That is how the modern-day Tea-Publican Party, no longer the "Party of Lincoln," would attack Lincoln today if he was running for reelection. It was all his fault that insurrectionists engaged in an act of sedition against the United States. "Lincoln didn't preserve the Union!"

This is the proper historical context in which to consider the latest right-wing noise machine media attack on President Obama. Obama promised to change the tone in Washington during his 2008 campaign. It is all his fault that Tea-Publican insurrectionists engaged in an act of sedition against the United States. "Obama didn't change the tone in Washington!"

On January 20, 2009 Republican Leaders in Congress literally conspired to
sabotage and undermine the U.S. Economy, already in a free-fall at the time, during President Obama's
Inauguration. You can read about it in Robert Draper's new book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives." Robert Draper Book: GOP's Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration – The Huffington Post. The Tea-Publican insurrectionists engaged in an act of sedition against the United States on Obama's day one.

So what has the right-wing noise machine all worked up today? A supposed Obama "gaffe" that he said at the Univision town hall: “The most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside.” Greg Sargent explains, Obama’s latest `gaffe’: Vowing to engage more Americans in the political process:

Republicans and conservatives are pouncing. Mitt Romney
slammed Obama over the remarks today, arguing that he has thrown in the
“white flag of surrender.” So it’s now a real story.

Okay, then. Here’s Obama’s quote:

“The fact that we haven’t been able to change the tone in
Washington is disappointing. We know now that as soon as I came into
office you already had meetings among some of our Republicans colleagues
saying, `how do we figure out how to beat the president?’ I think that
I’ve learned some lessons over the last four years. And the most
important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from
the inside. You can only change it from the outside. And that’s how the
big accomplishments, like health care, got done, was because we
mobilized the American people to speak out…something that I’d really
like to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more
constant conversation with the American people, so they can put pressure
on Congress to move some of these issues forward.”

This is a gaffe? The idea seems to be that the isolated sentence
shows Obama admitting failure at one of the central goals of his
presidency and declaring this goal impossible. Was this an admission of
failure? Well, yes, it was. You know how we know this? Because he said
so right there in that first sentence: “The fact that we haven’t been
able to change the tone in Washington is disappointing.”

But come on — Obama is not saying that achieving change in Washington
is impossible. Obama is making a standard inside-game-outside-game
argument here, one he’s made for years. He is making an argument about how
meaningful change is achieved. He’s arguing that the only way to
achieve it is by compelling action from elected officials — by
mobilizing public pressure on them through the engagement of as many
Americans as possible into the political process.

* * *

Obama today regretted that he had not achieved more cooperation from
Congress and said he wished he’d had more success breaking the
stranglehold of partisanship and gridlock on the political process. He
said he hopes to do more in his second term to mobilize public opinion —
not just to achieve more of the change he achieved that way during his
first term, but also to force more fundamental change in how Congress
operates. If Romney thinks the promise to engage more Americans in the
political process is a gaffe, that is certainly newsworthy.

You know how you can mobilize public opinion and compel action from Congress? By throwing the insurrectionist "less-than-do-nothing" Tea-Publican Congress out of office for their transgressions against this country and to elect Democratic majorities to Congress to give President Obama the working majorities he needs for a mandate. Youi break congressional gridlock by ridding Congress of the obstructionist "Party of No."