President Obama is publicly beckoning Republicans to do more and better than solidly oppose everything he and congressional Democrats try to do, saying if Republicans want to govern they must contribute more than “No!”
To the extent this gently phrased, positive approach to calling out Republicans raises the stakes for them politically because it throws a spotlight on their obstruction, it’s a good thing.
But our president and everyone else should be clear there’s virtually no chance congressional Republicans will work in a positive way to find reasonable compromises on vital matters such as health care and financial reform, and combating global warming.
To do that, Republicans, already in the doghouse with a substantial majority of Americans, would have to risk alienating their base of government-hating, tax-phobic and all-around resentful people, sometimes called the 23 percenters.
That radical-conservative Republican base looks on compromise as capitulation or selling out. Those in it see working in a constructive way with a president whose religious beliefs they’re suspicious of, whose citizenship they question and whose race many of them find offensive, as political treason. On top of that, they’re so steeped in their own paranoid propaganda that they are convinced Obama is a doctrinaire socialist.
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After Massachusetts, Democrats were looking for leadership; they didn’t get it. Ten days later, nobody is sure what Obama intends to do, and his aides are giving conflicting readings. It’s as if Obama checked out.
