Do the Republicans really care about bipartisanship?
By Keith Boykin
Thursday, February 19 2009, 10:26AM
in politics
Is bipartisanship still possible after House Republicans voted against President Obama's stimulus bill and seem intent on opposing his housing plan as well?
I debated that point on MSNBC Wednesday afternoon. When asked about Obama's strategy, my response was that he is still reaching across the aisle, even if Republicans are turning their backs on him.
My comments:
"Clearly he thinks bipartisanship is still possible. i went to law school with Barack. He was a person who could unify people even way back then. I think he still wants to do that. He's gone to unprecedented lengths to try to reach out to Republicans. He went to Capitol Hill. He met with Republicans there. He brought them to the White House. He put three of them or tried to put three of them in his cabinet. He put a third of his stimulus package into tax cuts. He did everything he possibly could."
I'm not sure I believe you can have bipartisanship when the other side is trying to sabotage you. Moreover, the American people had a choice last fall and they chose Obama's way. They didn't vote for McCain's way and they didn't vote to split the difference. As I wrote on The Daily Voice last week, "We won! In the American system of government, the winner makes the decisions. That doesn't mean the president has to be rude or dismissive, but he does have to deliver what he promised."
The full video is available at this link.
Not sure how this video link works, but it's from a cool new service called TV Eyes Media Monitoring Service that apparently records video of just about every news show. I believe it's a subscriber-based service so I'm not sure if non-subscribers will be able to see this video.
