Obama Takes Some Steps Toward Center
The bottom line? No significant reconciliation between the battling parties is evident yet. But there may be room for compromise on some issues.
Obama, forced to refocus his agenda in response to voter anger over the high jobless rate in an election year, opened a new search for common ground after spending his first year relying largely on Democrats to push his agenda forward.
With healthcare stalled after the election of a Republican senator from Massachusetts created a subtle shift in power in the Senate, Obama switched gears, giving secondary roles to priorities like healthcare and climate change.
In his State of the Union address, he dangled some tempting treats to Republicans: more nuclear power plants and offshore drilling, more U.S. exports and small business tax credits.
“He moved center-right,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “Instead of bailouts and stimulus money being thrown at the economy, the reset is going to be government working for big infrastructure projects, to get Republicans and corporate support.”
Republicans did make some encouraging noises.
“It was welcome news that the president was for more offshore drilling, more domestic production of oil and gas. I don’t think I’ve heard the president be more forceful when it comes to the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States,” said the Republican leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boehner.
And Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell liked the focus on jobs.
“The president and I agree on the need to meet in the middle to find bipartisan agreement to grow jobs,” he said.
But Republicans who have managed a comeback from the political graveyard by resisting Obama were intrigued only to a point.
They hope they can convert voter disenchantment with Obama into big gains against Democrats in November congressional elections, and have little inclination to help a man they feel blames them for most of what ails America.
“Republicans are wary,” said Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “They don’t want to cooperate if they can avoid it because they’ve gone from oblivion to a solid, strong position by being completely uncooperative in the last year.”
Obama, addressing a crowd in Tampa, Florida, on Thursday, denounced what he called the “you win, I lose” mentality that he said Republicans are practicing.
“I mean, that can’t be a platform. Even if you disagree with me on some specific issues, all of us should be rooting for each other — all of us should be rooting for America and solving problems,” he said.
Hammering home that point showed he is mindful that independent voters who helped elect him but have been leaving him in droves and that he needs to entice them back.
Obama has a long way to go to convince the other side to the dance floor.
David Dreier, a Republican House member, said he cannot remember a more partisan State of the Union speech, criticizing Obama for “looking over to us and saying to us that, rather than listening to the polls, we should ‘do what’s right.”
In the end, however, Ornstein said he thinks Republicans will move Obama’s way on a limited basis to address the “Party of No” label that Democrats try to pin on them.
“A lot of them are growing nervous that the ‘Party of No’ image of obstructionism will stick,” he said.
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