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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:undisclosed-recipients:">undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, February 04, 2010 10:59 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Obama courts the Republican right</DIV></DIV>
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<H2>Obama courts the Republican right</H2>
<H5>1 February 2010</H5>The 90-minute televised meeting between President Barack
Obama and the House Republican caucus, broadcast over the cable networks Friday,
was an extraordinary exposure of the right-wing consensus within American
bourgeois politics.<BR><BR>It was a demonstration of the administration’s
decision, in the wake of the Republican victory in last month’s Senate election
in Massachusetts and other signs of mounting popular opposition to Obama’s
right-wing agenda, to shift even further to the right.<BR>While the commentary
afterwards, particularly from liberal and pro-administration pundits, portrayed
the encounter as a political tour-de-force by Obama, a sort of “Daniel in the
lion’s den” performance, what was remarkable was the wide area of convergence,
on both specific policy measures and overall perspective, between Obama and the
Republicans.<BR>Obama cajoled and pleaded with his audience of Republican
congressmen, reminding them that they had provided him political support on
escalating the war in Afghanistan, adding, in a typical piece of patriotic
boilerplate, “I know that we’re all united in our admiration of our
troops.”<BR>He featured in his opening remarks the announcement of a tax credit
for small business “job creation,” as well as the elimination of capital gains
taxes for investment in small business. “Join me,” he appealed, “there’s nothing
in that proposal that runs contrary to the ideological predispositions of this
caucus.”<BR>There was no hint in his approach that his audience represented a
party and a previous administration that were decisively repudiated by the
American people in successive elections, or that the Republican Party’s policies
and personnel are deeply unpopular, currently drawing the support of less than
25 percent in opinion polls. Watching the event, one would hardly have guessed
that Obama’s party not only controlled the White House, but also held large
majorities in both houses of Congress.<BR>As he has since taking office little
more than a year ago, Obama sought to politically rehabilitate the Republicans
and find a means of winning their collaboration in his policies of war,
austerity and attacks on democratic rights. As he and everyone else in the room
well knew, the source of the erosion in public support for the administration
was not its non-existent liberal reform agenda or popular hostility to “big
government,” but disillusionment and anger over Obama’s repudiation of campaign
promises that tapped into the popular demand for progressive change.<BR>For
their part, the Republicans made clear both at the meeting and in news interview
programs on Sunday that they have no intention of budging from their policy of
obstructing the administration’s domestic initiatives. They calculate that they
can exploit growing disillusionment with Obama and make major gains in
congressional elections in November.<BR>Obama’s main reproach was that the House
Republican caucus, while agreeing with significant portions of such initiatives
as the economic stimulus bill and the health care restructuring plan, had
provided zero votes in favor of the legislation. “If there’s uniform opposition
because the Republican caucus doesn’t get 100 percent or 80 percent of what you
want, then it’s going to be hard to get a deal done,” he complained.<BR>Obama
took eight questions from leading Republican House members, most of them calling
for cuts in taxes and in federal spending. Not a single Republican suggested
that any action be taken by the federal government to actually assist the
unemployed—no benefits, no training programs, no jobs—nor did Obama point out
their failure to do so.<BR>Instead, the Democratic president promised to
consider the Republican proposals seriously, and pointed to his support for an
expansion of nuclear power plants and so-called clean coal technology as an area
of agreement with Republican proposals on energy policy.<BR>The most revealing
exchange came when Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee raised the issue
of Obama’s health care plan. Obama said that his policy, combining
across-the-board cost-cutting with a modest expansion of health care coverage
for the uninsured, was very similar to measures proposed jointly by former
Republican Senate leaders Howard Baker and Robert Dole and former Democratic
Senate leader Tom Daschle last year.<BR>“That’s not a radical bunch,” he said.
“But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went
after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot.” He went
on to emphasize the conservative character of the health plan, saying, “if you
look at the facts of this bill, most independent observers would say this is
actually what many Republicans—is similar to what many Republicans proposed to
Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care.”<BR>Toward the end of
the session, Obama declared: “We’ve got to be careful about what we say about
each other sometimes, because it boxes us in, in ways that make it difficult for
us to work together, because our constituents start believing us. They don’t
know sometimes this is just politics what you guys or folks on my side do
sometimes.”<BR>The bluntness of this political cynicism is staggering. Obama in
effect admits that the supposed conflict between the Democratic Party and the
Republican Party, which comprises the whole of official American politics, is
largely a political show, a con game aimed at victimizing the vast majority of
the American people.<BR>He was warning his Republican counterparts that they
were overdoing the anti-administration rhetoric in a way that was politically
dangerous. They were going beyond the “just politics” mudslinging that is
standard practice for the two big business parties, in a way that threatened to
discredit the political system and make the usual congressional horse-trading
impossible.<BR>In response to the final question of the session, by ultra-right
Texas Congressman Jeb Hensarling, about the rising federal budget deficit, Obama
warned that the Republicans should not posture as defenders of the elderly
against cuts in Medicare (as they have in the health care debate) or against
cuts in Social Security, because that would make impossible a bipartisan
approach to entitlement “reform.”<BR>Obama’s main concern is not so much the
health care plan per se, but the larger project of which it is part, i.e.,
gutting the basic federally-funded social programs—Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security—in order to pay for the enormous budget deficits produced by the
financial crisis, tax cuts for the wealthy, the bank bailout and two imperialist
wars.<BR>Patrick Martin <BR>
<HR>
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