Obama: Trying to destroy the GOP?

last updated 8 January 2015

Is President Obama deliberately trying to finish off a wounded Republican Party? asked Linda Feldmann in CSMonitor.com. Many conservatives now insist that Obama is pursuing a conscious strategy to “exacerbate the GOP’s internal divisions” and cause the party to implode in bitter infighting. House Speaker John Boehner and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh both recently said Obama’s goal is to “annihilate the Republican Party,” with Limbaugh warning listeners that Obama was seeking nothing less than the destruction of conservatism itself and “the elimination of all viable opposition.” That might be overstating it, said Scott Wilson and Philip Rucker in The Washington Post, but this much is true: After four years of watching the GOP block “even the most politically popular elements of his agenda,” Obama has given up negotiating with the Right. He’s launched an all-out fundraising and organizing effort to help Democrats win back the House of Representatives in the 2014 midterms, so he can push forward with his progressive agenda.

We told you so, said Jennifer Rubin in WashingtonPost.com. Despite “liberal pundits scoffing,” it has been obvious since the election that Obama is more interested in “breaking the back of the opposition” than in governing responsibly. Both the fiscal cliff and debt-ceiling showdowns were engineered by Obama to divide the GOP and make it look obstructionist. With the current “faux negotiations” over the automatic spending cuts known as the “sequester,” Obama’s doing it again: offering “compromise” solutions he knows the GOP won’t accept, then rushing to the cameras to complain again about Republican “intransigence.” It’s the same on immigration, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Rather than let a bipartisan consensus develop, Obama is trying to push immigration legislation so far left that the GOP can’t accept it, and then “use the issue to drive minority turnout in 2014.”

Who knew Republicans “could be such wussies?” said Michael Kinsley in NewRepublic.com. They used to be “the Party of Testosterone,” but now they’re self-pitying babies bleating, “Mama, President Obama is picking on us.” Don’t all politicians want to win elections and crush the opposition? Would the Tea Party like to annihilate liberal Democrats? “Heck, yes.” So Republicans can stop whining about “big, bad President Obama.” He’s a skilled, ambitious politician, but he “has no superpowers.”