Bleah.

Imus: When you interview her, will she be sitting on your lap?
Wallace: One can only hope.

Baaarf. I don’t really expect anything from Imus in the way of plain human decency but did Wallace really have to respond in kind?

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201002040018

Translation: You can do what I want anyway you like.

This may play with the Democratic base, but the larger electorate sees through it.

They certainly won’t make any progress by blaming other people for their own failures.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/02/09/obama-calls-gop-bluff-on-health-care-reform/

Also, I liked the idea floated by Doris Kearns Goodwin on The Daily Show. Let ‘em filibuster. Let them stand up there are read recipes and so forth so the American people can see exactly why Health Care Reform, or anything else, isn’t passing.

At this point, I don’t think it’s well understood how many of the GOP’s central health-care policy ideas have already been included as compromises in the health-care bill. But one good way is to look at the GOP’s “Solutions for America” homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them — yes, you read that right — are in the Senate health-care bill.

You can read the whole thing here: http://tinyurl.com/y93863b

I think this really pinpoints the GOP point-of-view: Even when they get what they want, they dissemble and whinge about not being invited to the table because they are more interested in fighting aginst the Democrats than they are at getting anything done.

Seriously. The President is supposed to lead. He’s supposed to deal with the fact that people disagree with him. It’s a tough job. None of this is new. The President always has the initiative, and right now Obama is using it to complain that his opponents have the same opinions they had twelve months ago. Well, no kidding Barack, and have you noticed that recently those opinions have been winning elections in conservative bastions like New Jersey, and freakin’ MASSACHUSETTS? So far the only strategy we’ve seen from this guy is to repeat himself no matter. It isn’t going to get anything done.

The reality of governing is that you can’t hate the government you were elected to serve. I think Obama wants the GOP to stand up for the potshots and blatant lies they told last summer (and continue to tell in the case of Bachmann) . Face to face. Brilliant tactic. Especially after he mopped the floor with people like Chaffetz (R-UT), who denied funding for full-body x-ray machines at airports. The kind that would have detected the crotch bomber. The untenable position of arguing out of both sides of the mouth is about to be shot down with video cameras running.

One could argue that Obama is directly ceding to GOP demands AND calling them out. It’s about time the President started playing hardball.