After the incredible shellacking that Democrats received a week ago, wouldn’t you think that President Barack Obama would be a tad more conciliatory? Maybe a little less arrogant? A tiny bit more willing to compromise?
Not a bit of it. In a news conference last Wednesday, the president made it clear that he isn’t going to budge an inch. Pre-election, he had boasted that the elections of course would be about his policies, “every one of them.” But now that the voters had delivered a massive repudiation of them, he refused to take any responsibility for the massive Democratic loses.
In a Wall Street Journal column three days later, Peggy Noonan said that the president should have shown some humility. “Humility has power,” she explained. “It shows people that you have some give — you get the message, you are capable of self-correcting.”
Instead, the Republican analyst and former presidential speech writer said: “That is not what he’s doing. The President is instead doubling down on hostility, antagonism and distance.”
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Exactly. As just one example, consider Obama’s repeated insistence that unless Congress passes an immigration bill he likes, he will start issuing more executive orders to achieve his aims. He even had the nerve to claim, “I think it’s fair to say that I have shown a lot of patience and have tried to work on a bipartisan basis as much as possible.”
Sure thing, Mr. President — if you define “as much as possible” as never.
Of course, the Big Lie is nothing new in Washington. Back in 2006, when Harry Reid (D-Nev.) first became the Senate majority leader, he declared that it was “time for bipartisanship, it’s time for open government, transparency, and it’s time for results.” The pretense of bipartisanship didn’t last long. First, Reid helped ram the Affordable Care Act through the Senate without a single Republican vote. After that, he steadfastly refused to allow the Senate to consider a single one of more than 300 bills that were passed by the House of Representatives. In fact, he wouldn’t even allow any Republican amendments on the handful of bills that he allowed to come before the Senate.
Will things be any different once the Republicans are in charge of both branches of Congress? Let’s hope so.
One of the first things the new Republican majority should do is to pass legislation authorizing the Keystone Pipeline. Hopefully, the same bill would include other energy reforms, such as removing restrictions on energy exports and allowing more drilling offshore and on federal lands.
Such a bill is likely to get some significant Democrat support in both the House and the Senate. And if the president dared to veto it, the Republicans would have a very popular issue to campaign on in the 2016 elections.
Another area where the Republicans could act quickly is on tax reform. They should pass a measure that drastically slashes taxes on overseas profits of U.S. companies. The U.S. tax rate is currently among the highest in the world. Let’s lower it enough so that U.S. companies are encouraged to bring some of that estimated $3 trillion back to this country. Imagine how many jobs that could help create!
If that same bill also reduced taxes on corporate income and dividends, the result would be a massive shot in the arm for the U.S. economy, which badly needs it.
The Democrats played political hardball for the past six years. Let’s see what the Republicans do once they control what happens in Congress. It could hardly get any worse.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
Chip Wood was the first news editor of The Review of the News and also wrote for American Opinion, our two predecessor publications. He is now the geopolitical editor of Personal Liberty Digest. This article first appeared on PersonalLiberty.com and has been reprinted with permission.
