Fred Barnes | Obama’s No Pragmatist

Posted on May 14 2012 – 10:00 PM – Posted by: Doug Brady

The White House, Democrats, and sympathetic elements of the media have been remarkably successful in establishing this idea: that President Obama, a pragmatist at heart, has sought to accommodate congressional Republicans time after time, only to be spurned by a party bent on rejecting his policies across the board. There’s a problem with this notion. It’s not true.

For sure, Obama and Republicans are far apart ideologically, so much so there probably was no chance of reaching a compromise on health care legislation. But they might have cooperated on the economic stimulus package enacted in 2009 and on a number of smaller issues. Except then and now, Obama has shown little or no interest in taking GOP proposals, alternatives, or tweaks seriously, or even considering them at all.

Since announcing his bid for reelection, Obama has adopted the practice of unveiling a set of proposals ostensibly to create jobs and demanding it be passed pronto, without Republicans having been consulted or informed. He did this last September with a “jobs bill” and last week in Albany, New York, with what he called a “to-do list” of hiring and housing initiatives.

The first opportunity for a bipartisan compromise between the White House and Republicans involved the stimulus. House GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor met twice with Obama in January 2009, once when he was president-elect, then shortly after he was inaugurated. Republicans had suffered two straight landslide defeats, putting Boehner and Cantor in a weakened position.

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Article source: http://conservatives4palin.com/2012/05/fred-barnes-obamas-no-pragmatist.html