For my US political friends (and expect a long post from me on the subject, as soon as I can get my sleep issues back under some semblance of control):
There's always going to be dissatisfaction from parts of the left with any president who has to make compromises. That's not really proof that he's the kind of political pragmatist that Romney is. On a number of issues, Obama has been thoughtful and careful and politically aware- and very insistent on pushing the agenda he came in with.
Remember, throughout this campaign Romney's been advancing the argument that the health care bill he passed in Massachusetts was good for Massachusetts, but not necessarily good for the country. You can either pass that off as etch-a-sketch, you can call it 'lying', or you can pass it off as the kind of political pragmatism that values what the voters want more than some internal moral compass. My point is that the latter is something you can sell.
"Mitt Romney: If the voters want DADT Repealed, I can work on it, but I'm not going to do it by executive order" is an appealing political position.
And in my estimation it's the best Romney has to offer. He's going to come off as insincere if he thinks he has to present himself to the country as someone with deeply held beliefs that he's committed to fighting for. He plainly isn't a man like that.
People will always dislike compromise. On any side of any issue. If it looks worse from the Left than the Right, it's because you agree with the right. Actually, independant analysis shows that the Right has taken a sharp Right turn, while the Left has stayed pretty much where it has been.
In fact, they've moved so far Right that they've taken to denouncing their own policy proposals as Leftie garbage. The insurance mandate was the Republican platform in the 90s, Cap and Trade was the Republican platform in 2008, etc. Market-based solutions which they instantly turned against when Obama endorsed them.
It's also worth noting that on major issues where Obama has stepped in to take a personal hand in negotiations (health care, the debt limit, etc.) Republicans have repeatedly negotiated in bad faith. They say they want A, B, and C. Obama offers them A, B, and C with D for good measure. And suddenly they say that's no good. It's too far Left. They want E, F, and G, too, or they won't do anything.
As for Romney, he actually is on record as saying that he thinks his MA health care plan should be a model for the nation. There's video.And a transcript. And, oh yeah, an op-ed Romeny wrote in which he pushed for his plan (which Obama opposed at the time) to be adopted nationally. To say he never supported it as a national plan is a deliberate untruth. AKA a lie.
It's not pragmatism. Pragmatism is seeing what's doable and going for that. You could maybe say that pragmatism is changing your position because you see the tide has turned. But saying "I never said that" when there is, in fact, video of you repeatedly saying exactly that... That's lying. Flip-flopping is a whole other issue.
As for executive orders, Obama has made much less use of them than Bush did. And he held off on doing DADT by executive order for a long time because he knew that it could just be reversed by the next President. But the fact is that he is the Commander in Chief of the US armed forces, and it is his right to do that.
More to the point, Congress has become a broken mess. Largely because Senate Republicans have abused the filibuster to an historically unprecedented degree. Way more than back in the 90s when they raised a huge fuss about the Democrats using it more often. It's gotten to the point that they don't even have to filibuster anymore. They just have to say that they will, and the bill or the nominee or what have you doesn't even make it to the floor. It's gotten to the point that a majority vote still counts as losing because bills are now expected to get 60 votes. For everything. At that point, doing some things via executive order seems more than reasonable to me.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
Remember, throughout this campaign Romney's been advancing the argument that the health care bill he passed in Massachusetts was good for Massachusetts, but not necessarily good for the country. You can either pass that off as etch-a-sketch, you can call it 'lying', or you can pass it off as the kind of political pragmatism that values what the voters want more than some internal moral compass. My point is that the latter is something you can sell.
"Mitt Romney: If the voters want DADT Repealed, I can work on it, but I'm not going to do it by executive order" is an appealing political position.
And in my estimation it's the best Romney has to offer. He's going to come off as insincere if he thinks he has to present himself to the country as someone with deeply held beliefs that he's committed to fighting for. He plainly isn't a man like that.
From:
no subject
In fact, they've moved so far Right that they've taken to denouncing their own policy proposals as Leftie garbage. The insurance mandate was the Republican platform in the 90s, Cap and Trade was the Republican platform in 2008, etc. Market-based solutions which they instantly turned against when Obama endorsed them.
It's also worth noting that on major issues where Obama has stepped in to take a personal hand in negotiations (health care, the debt limit, etc.) Republicans have repeatedly negotiated in bad faith. They say they want A, B, and C. Obama offers them A, B, and C with D for good measure. And suddenly they say that's no good. It's too far Left. They want E, F, and G, too, or they won't do anything.
As for Romney, he actually is on record as saying that he thinks his MA health care plan should be a model for the nation. There's video. And a transcript. And, oh yeah, an op-ed Romeny wrote in which he pushed for his plan (which Obama opposed at the time) to be adopted nationally. To say he never supported it as a national plan is a deliberate untruth. AKA a lie.
It's not pragmatism. Pragmatism is seeing what's doable and going for that. You could maybe say that pragmatism is changing your position because you see the tide has turned. But saying "I never said that" when there is, in fact, video of you repeatedly saying exactly that... That's lying. Flip-flopping is a whole other issue.
As for executive orders, Obama has made much less use of them than Bush did. And he held off on doing DADT by executive order for a long time because he knew that it could just be reversed by the next President. But the fact is that he is the Commander in Chief of the US armed forces, and it is his right to do that.
More to the point, Congress has become a broken mess. Largely because Senate Republicans have abused the filibuster to an historically unprecedented degree. Way more than back in the 90s when they raised a huge fuss about the Democrats using it more often. It's gotten to the point that they don't even have to filibuster anymore. They just have to say that they will, and the bill or the nominee or what have you doesn't even make it to the floor. It's gotten to the point that a majority vote still counts as losing because bills are now expected to get 60 votes. For everything. At that point, doing some things via executive order seems more than reasonable to me.