Who’s winning the debates in Washington?

Since President Barack Obama took office in 2008, Republicans have been vocal about their obsession to make him a one-term president. The GOP leaders and pseudo leaders made it a slogan, declaring their resolve to do everything to make sure Barack Obama gets no more than four years to spend in the White House. Instead of working to make life better for the people like they had campaigned to do, they make no qualms about telling the people they exist for one and only one purpose and that is to do everything within their means to block Obama from getting a second term.
True enough, these legislators showed Obama he couldn’t win them over even on legislations that they once supported or bills that could be good for the country. They fought the passing of the healthcare reform bill and when it got through they demonized and challenged it all the way to the Supreme Court. In a matter of days, the signature legislation President Obama’s administration passed after a long and bitter fight with the Republicans, will either stand or be ruled unconstitutional and therefore, nullified. God forbid, if the second possibility happens, not only will it change the dynamics of the legislative process, it will also redefine, weaken even, the power of the federal government. It will also be a major blow on President Obama’s accomplishment and possibly threaten his bid for reelection.
The question is, how could the GOPs- conservatives, moderates and what not seem to be always winning the political debates in Washington? Why are the Democrats the ones always caving in? How did President Obama lose his mojo amidst these Republican bullies? How could he so easily and almost without a fight, surrender the promise of change he told his hopeful voters to believe in to the old Washington doctrine that to balance the budget and close the deficit, Washington should take away or substantially cut back these entitlements such as Medicaid, Medicare, student loans and disability pensions. However, they should not only extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich but they must also lower their taxes. This Republican idea that these rich job creators must not be unnecessarily saddled with high taxes to allow them to create more jobs is simply accepted as the truth.
In coming to the bargaining table with Republican John Boehner, President Obama was desperate to cut a deal and was willing to do, according to reports, a “$1.2 trillion in government cuts, reductions in cost-of-living, raises on Social Security recipients, some $250 billion in cuts from Medicare by raising the eligibility age and $800 billion in “bogus” tax revenues.
The commentary Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine wrote of Obama on the failed deal with the Republicans on budget reconciliation was unflattering. He said, “Okay, so the Republicans were demanding big tax cuts for the rich — lower income tax rates, and keeping in place the tax breaks that most benefit the rich, thereby insuring that the burden of any higher revenue would fall on the non-rich. Obama, incredibly, agreed to that — he agreed to a debt reduction plan that would exempt the wealthy from any sacrifice, and indeed protect them from the possibility that their tax rates would rise when the Bush tax cuts expire.’
‘Not exactly the kind of change he campaigned on…Apparently the biggest sticking point wasn’t the fact that the deal called for reducing the budget deficit on the backs of seniors, the middle class, and the poor, or that it was a huge giveaway to the rich. It was the $800 billion in bogus revenue. But, according to Bill Daley, Obama’s chief of staff at the time, “everybody was saying the right thing,” and “we walked away feeling that we were 80 percent there.” Characterizing support of most of the details of that deal as “saying the right thing” captures everything that’s wrong with Washington. And a president who was “80 percent” okay with that deal is a far cry from the president most Obama supporters thought they were supporting.”.
Yet as Chait wrote, the deal with Boehner collapsed, not because Obama stood his ground to defend his campaign promises to the people but because Boehner didn’t have the vote because of the influence “of the newly-elected Tea Party freshmen who, in turn, ended up saving Obama from Obama.”
As polished and persuasive Obama is as a speaker, it is the stubborn, unyielding and unreasonable Republicans who know how to monopolize and win the debate in Washington.