It's not Obama's fault he can't get any bipartisan cooperation. The Republicans have decided that since the American people voted them out they're going to take their ball and go home. They've promised to bring Congress to a standstill by filibustering every single piece of legislation to come through. That doesn't sound bipartisan to me.
Obama listened to the Republicans concerns, perhaps too much, and made changes to the bill to try to satisfy them. What he didn't realize is that they don't want to be satisfied. They want to obstruct the business of the country at every opportunity. He could have made the bill nothing but tax cuts and they still would have tried to torpedo it. That's what they do. They don't actually have anything to run on in 2010, no ideas that might appeal to America, so they're going to make sure nothing passes in the next two years and then run on the idea that the Democrats didn't do anything. It didn't work for them in 2008 but then again the Republicans have always been the party of trying old failed ideas over and over again hoping they'll eventually work. If they had any new ideas they'd be Democrats.
As for Gregg, he volunteered for the position. This is quite suspicious for someone who once voted to abolish the Commerce Dept. He only wanted the job so he could run the census and make sure the Republicans won a bunch of extra seats. Once that was taken away there was really no reason for him to stay.
"All the talk about bipartisanship that we have heard over the last several months went down the drain," House Republican leader John Boehner complained on Friday.
Nice try there Boner. You have to give bipartisanship to get bipartisanship. The reason this didn't work out in a bipartisan way was because the Republicans didn't want it to turn out that way. They behaved in a hyper-partisan way and now they want to bitch about the Dems. It doesn't work that way. As far as the Republicans are concerned, bipartisanship means they get everything they want and Dems get nothing. That may have worked when they ruled the Congress with an iron fist but there's a new Sheriff in town.
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