Why the GOP should embrace Obama

Despite conservatives insisting he's an out-of-control socialist, the president is downright Republican on many key issues

Paul Brandus

As the curtain rises on Barack Obama's second term, where's the love from Republicans? After all, when you think about some of things he did over the past four years, he's one of them.

Like Richard Nixon, Obama raised taxes on the rich and cut them for everyone else. Like Nixon, who created the Environmental Protection Agency, Obama fought for cleaner air and water. Like Ronald Reagan, Obama backed tough measures to curb gun violence. Like Reagan, he dreamed of a cap and trade plan to help the environment. (Reagan's dream came true with a global treaty to save the ozone layer in 1987.) Obama copied Mitt Romney's health-care plan and George W. Bush's immigration plan. Like Bush, he ordered a troop surge to gain strategic advantage in an unpopular war — before cutting a deal to end it. And like Reagan and Bush (and Dick Cheney, who said deficits don't matter), under Obama, the debt exploded.

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Paul Brandus

An award-winning member of the White House press corps, Paul Brandus founded WestWingReports.com (@WestWingReport) and provides reports for media outlets around the United States and overseas. His career spans network television, Wall Street, and several years as a foreign correspondent based in Moscow, where he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union for NBC Radio and the award-winning business and economics program Marketplace. He has traveled to 53 countries on five continents and has reported from, among other places, Iraq, Chechnya, China, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.