You gotta love Fred Barnes:
In Washington these days, President Obama is rumored to be hoping Republicans capture the House of Representatives in the midterm election in November. There’s no evidence for this speculation, so far as I know, but it’s hardly far-fetched. If Mr. Obama wants to avert a fiscal crisis and win re-election in 2012, he needs House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be removed from her powerful post. A GOP takeover may be the only way.
To say there is no evidence for this speculation is an understatement. The president has had no success in working with House Republicans on any measure over the last year and a half and his agenda would be completely blocked if he had to deal with a Speaker Boehner and a bunch of Republican committee chairs.
As it is, he is finding Congress unwilling to add sufficient stimulus or even pass a budget. What the president needs above all is for the voters to defy expectations and return huge Democratic majorities to Congress. That is the only way he can break the logjam in Washington and take on big issues.
Translation:
I, Fred Barnes, am shopping around this worthless garbage that masquerades as informed opinion…in hopes that every Republican’s wet dream comes true.
I also wonder whether he ever considers the implications of the ‘Newt Gingrich saved Bill Clinton’s presidency’ narrative.
Is that Fred Barnes or Paul Rosenberg?
I know you can’t stand Rosenberg, but your comment is flat out stupid. Whatever you think of him, Rosenberg would never write anything like that.
Oh, I disagree. I think Rosenberg would write something like that. In fact, I predict he either already has or will shortly suggest that Obama would like to be freed of pesky liberal criticism so that he can pursue his Third Way agenda more freely.
Agreed. I don’t go to Open Left on the weekends. I wonder if their traffic drops when he’s running the place.
You’re a better person than I. I can’t go there at all any more. And OL isn’t alone in that category. FDL, DK. there are many members of lefty blogosphere 1.0 which lost my attention once a Democrat won the White House and actually tried to govern. Some blogs adapted to this reality. Others couldn’t.
Oh well, it’s a big internet.
Oh come on. He thinks Pelosi will lose Obama the election? Please. This personal vendetta grows tiresome.
Lets stop and think about that for a moment. Rosenberg would argue that Obama wouldn’t care if The Cryin’ Orange was Speaker? Obama might like him some Blue Dogs, but that’s different. Blue Dogs aren’t going to initiate impeachment proceedings. And we know that Republicans would love to do just that.
I could almost write it
I swore off the crack-pipe of WSJ opinion many years ago. As for the stimulus debate, isn’t it interesting that the MSM gave a year long wet-kiss to a pitiful assemblage of aging and astro-turfed white men, and couldn’t be bothered to say anything about OFA, or any similar organization on the left? It’s almost as if corporate interests align with hysterical fears about the deficit and unhinged rhetoric about socialism.
It would be nice if congressmen would ban CNN and MSNBC (to say nothing of Fox) in their offices. But I guess they have to see what their corporate donors are worried about.
wow. speaking of [fantasizing about] creating your own reality
Hardly far-fetched? Really? Pelosi caused the fiscal crisis and is itching to cause more? Pelosi is keeping him from being reelected? Unbelievable. He just makes shit up and tries to pass it off as “rumored”.
I knew Barnes was a rightwing shill, but never thought of him as a teabagging moron of the Beck/Limbaugh kind. I’m naive to be surprised to see him in the front of the Pelosi-hate crazy train. Makes ya wonder if he’s partaking of Murdoch’s special trickle down privileges.
Barnes is pretty nutty, even for wingnut pundits. My mom’s aunts all went fundy in their old age, and on those rare occasions when I visited them, The 700 Club was always on the TV. One of them once turned to me and said, “wouldn’t it be great of Pat Robertson became President?”
Barnes was a regular on Pat’s medicine show, and that was in the early ’90s. He’s been in fantasy land probably as long, if not longer than El Rushbo.
It’s not stupid, it’s strategic.
He’s trying to plant a “help Obama – elect republicans to Congress!” meme. His motivation is obvious: Obama’s approvals stubbornly refuse to drop.
So McConnell is trying to pretend republicans are on his side.
McConnell is far from the first republican to try to cozy up to Obama for campaign purposes.
This is all pretty obvious stuff.