http://open.salon.com/blog/the_flylooper/2012/02/14/obama_continues_to_box_in_his_opposition Obama Continues to Box In His Opposition
Nothing could be more obvious – and to a progressive, encouraging. Barack Obama has managed, particularly since the disaster of the 2010 midterm elections, to box in the GOP into narrower and narrower confines. And in doing so he has opened up a 15 point lead in some polls over his likely challenger, the erstwhile “severely conservative” Mitt Romney. Obama, by luck or design, is beginning to stand out as the only sane guy in the room.
On issue after issue, the GOP exposes itself with out-of-touch positions on nearly everything from a woman's sexual health, to extended payroll tax cuts, to foreign policy, to jobs creation, and darned near anything else of major or minor importance. Whatever position the President stakes out, the GOP can dependably be certain to not only disagree with, but press it home, bullhorn in hand (aided by Fox News Channel and Rush Limbaugh (along with a host of minor media “conservalebrities”) with the electorate.
And the electorate seems to be responding in ways in which the Grand Old Party may pay a significant price in November. Though 9 months is an eternity in politics, the trend is working for the President at this juncture, and may even work for the Democrats in general come November
Has Obama resorted to “Rope-a-Dope” in the year of his running for a 2nd term? It may be that the GOP - and even the Catholic hierarchy - is punching itself out. There is no groundswell for any of its current positions. The anger and discontent of 2010 has perhaps made them realize that they threw the baby out with the bathwater (with current congressional approval at around 9%). And while Mitt, Rick and Newt decree that the imminent destruction of America is at hand, there has never been a politician who has been elected without something positive to ask the voter to imagine.
So far, all they ask of us is to allow them and their obscenely rich friends to keep their hands in the cookie jar a while longer, while we all sing “America the Beautiful.”
