Obama and Co. have spent the past few days shopping around the idea that Republicans in Washington are out of touch and not pursuing the changes their constituents want, and it looks like the media is finally picking up the slack.
Republican governors across the country are supporting Obama in many of his efforts, but especially with the stimulus. It’s funny, in the past few election cycles the big GOP talking point in the primaries and then again in the general election (except this most recent one) was that the governor in the race (Bush) was infinitely more qualified to serve as president than the senator in the race (pre-VP Gore, Kerry), because he had “executive” experience and wasn’t some rich DC-resident who barely flew back to the state that elected him. Yet now that 22 (22!) Republican governors, the men and women who are on the ground watching their states collapse, support Obama, I have a feeling that line of thinking will be quickly cut down by the likes of Cantor and Boehner.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few days and weeks both with Obama’s relationship with the GOP in DC and at large, and within the Republican party itself. Now that Jim Douglas of Vermont, M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut and Charlie Crist of Florida, among others, are behind Obama, does he have more political capital? Hell, Crist was nearly McCain’s running mate (he even had a sham marriage just in case) and he’s been out there barnstorming for Barack’s stimulus package! Or does it really not matter what the rest of the country thinks, and the Republican members of Congress feel that they answer to no one but themselves?
The media has been seizing on the Republicans’ decision to vote “no” en masse as some sort of sign of party unity and realignment, painting Boehner and Cantor as the new Newts of the party, the guys who’ll be the thorns in Obama’s side for the next four years. And maybe they’ll be those thorns, but it seems rather premature to be talking party unity when it’s so clearly in disarray. But with the New York Times article and this piece on Politico, perhaps the media is finally getting past the need to prove that they’re not “in the tank” for Obama (Jon Stewart, wtf?), and starting to accurately reflect what’s going on in and outside the beltway.
- Water American
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