Posted by
Bill Crawford on Thursday, January 29, 2009 1:53:08 PM
Many moons ago, I had a friend who played baseball for a mid-level college team. They were due to face a left handed pitcher who had a bit of a fearsome reputation- good fastball, phenomenal breaking stuff, etc. Rumor had it that there were major league scouts following him around.
Everybody was getting the hives worrying about this guy. When game time came, the first three batters went down, but his stuff turned out to be not much better than what they had seen in many games they had already played. They looked up and down the dugout and agreed that this guy was nothing special, and could be taken.
Which brings us to Obama The Great. Obama the Grand Promiser. Obama the Unifier. Obama the Bringer of the New Age.
There would have to come a time when he passed from talking about what he was going to do to actually doing it.
So what did he do? He spent some time listening to the GOP caucus, and threw them a couple of bones- for instance, no Pelosi funding for birth control. But tax cuts? Sorry. What did he get from the Republicans? Bupkus. Zero. Nada.
The Democrats loaded the bill up with earmarks as if they were invented last week. Obama didn't even make an effort to stop them.
Two things have become obvious. First, the GOP has decided that the Democrats own this, and they don't want any part of it. They will not sign on to anybody in the White House labelling this as "bipartisan".
More importantly, he obviously does not control his own party on Capitol Hill. This is critical. He will have to govern, at least in part, as Pelosi and Reid demand he does. This, if he doesn't rein them in soon, will be the kiss of death for him.
If this all passes, and the economy doesn't get much better by the 2010 elections, Obama may walk out of that with far fewer numbers on the Hill than he has now.
Judging from his words, I don't understand why he would let that happen, not without at least a fight. His biggest obstacle to immortality is his own party.