Friday, August 10, 2012

Last Call

Greg Sargent details the interesting bits of a new book about the stimulus, including a passage attributed to VP Joe Biden about the GOP deciding even before the President took office that they had to destroy him.

Biden says that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any cooperation on many votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators, who said, `Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ he recalls. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was: `For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’” Biden says.

The vice president says he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along these lines.

Later in the book, former Ohio GOP Sen. George Voinovich confirms these orders from Mitch McConnell as well.  And the plan worked:  Republicans gained 63 House seats and 7 Senate seats by blaming the Democrats.  Even Republicans admit that the GOP Plan was in full effect from November 2008 onward:

“People were pretty demoralized, and there were two totally opposite thoughts on how to approach the situation,” a McConnell aide recalls. “One was, `we don't like the president, we ought to pop him early.’ The other was, `he’s really popular, we should work with him, because that’s what people want us to do.’ The boss’s take was: Neither." McConnell realized that it would be much easier to fight Obama if Republicans first made a public show of wanting to work with him.

And so they lied from election day and were fabulously rewarded for it, because our corporate "liberal" media was 100% compliant in selling it, especially after the ACA passed.  Now of course long-time readers will remind us that McConnell's open statement saying the number one goal of the GOP was to make Obama a one-term President isn't news, but the fix was in to sabotage the economy through inaction from the moment Obama won.  They were never, ever going to work with him.  They were only going to try to destroy him...and us along with him.

Vote accordingly come November.

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