Here's the problem in reaching a resolution that we can both agree to. The facts are that Republicans have opposed virtually everything that Obama has proposed.
Is this based on your anecdotal view, or do you have some kind of objective measure of things that President Obama has proposed that have been opposed, and the comparative rate that has applied for past Presidents?
I see you went straight to non-substantive explanations below, but you skipped the most probable reason they opposed him. His positions where extreme left and not consistent with what they, and especially their constituents, believe are the best policies for the country. I note, you and others, never jump up and blame the Democrats when they make a party line vote, utter silence for their lack of cooperation, or more like big kudos for "standing up" to the Republicans. The idea that the opposition has a duty to roll over and support extreme positions they oppose is a bizarre one in the first place.
This might be:
- Obama's fault for never trying for common ground
- the Republican's fault for opposing anything if Obama proposed it
- both of their faults (because if groups of people hold two seperate views, the truth must be in the middle)
- Obama's fault because he did not always try for common ground, but instead on many occasions he did not try to collaborate but instead just activate his base
Or like I said, the result of starting with extremist positions. I mean Obamacare? Fundemental change in how healthcare operates, particularly as originally formulated or with the single payer model, and more than 50% of the population didn't want it to occur. Why would anyone act to facilitate it? As I recall they offered up that they would consider piecemeal solutions (ie vote to pass that on which everyone agreed), yet the only option was the Omnibus that included everything they didn't want.
While it is possible that arguments of the form of (3) above could be true, they need more data then just the existence of two different points of view.
No. It's a fallacy to assume that the truth is between two opposing opinions. The truth could be something else entirely, or their could be more than one truth. There are facts, and there is opinion about what will happen if you alter the facts. Predictions are not truths.
Evidence that I find compelling of (2) is
Pre-inauguration actions in response to President Obama inviting Republican Senator Gregory to be in his cabinet - naming a member from the other party is a traditional olive branch to the other party - and yet Gregory was strongly pressured by other Republicans to reject the nomination, something I have never seen happen before
How exhaustive was your research? I don't want to waste time searching for something that certainly has historical analogues if you didn't even bother to look for them. After your assertions about the quotes above I'm not going to assume you're making researched claims on this.
The widely-reported (and acknowledged) gathering of Republican Congressional leadership on the night of the inauguration where they agreed to a strategy of universal opposition to Obama
And? Seriously, and? Every opposition party in history has made such a plan, and whether or not they have being able to stick with (which is ultimately about whether they will have any power in the new government) has been based on how well the majority party conducts its outreach. I agree with you that the Obama Administration has been awful at building any trust or inroads with Republicans. I chalk that up to his inability to create something even approximating a tempting offer than to any particularly magical ability of the Republicans to hold firm (a feat neither party has ever had success with in a world where they are more beholden to their local voters than the party as a whole).
Immediate, universal opposition by Republicans to policies that that had supported in the past - for example, the Republicans universally used a talking point from the start of the Obama Administration that an economic stimulus package does not create jobs, even though many of them had voted for such a stimulus package in the past under a Republican President and even though 115 Republican members of the House of Representatives then went back to their district and were quoted by local newspapers as taking credit for the jobs created in their district by the stimulus
Can you provide details? In my experience none of these claims hold true with scrutiny. The President virtually never puts something out without tying it to some pet poison pill. Like he puts forward a stimulus bill, but ties it to funding organizations that he obviously intends to use to increase his own voter turnout (hello AmeriCorps).
Republicans somehow managed to keep criticizing "the stimulus" while ignoring the fact that it was the largest middle class tax cut in US history - if they actually cared about collaboration to achieve policy goals rather than partisanship, the logical response would have been to publicize the accomplishment of what they said was one of their main policy goals
Can you provide the numbers to back this. I think they are not stupid. A "tax cut" where people had less real income after than they did before isn't much to proclaim success about. The stimulus as a whole locked in a massive federal spending increase that was directly contrary to the desires of the majority of their voters, what exactly would they be bragging about?
I do think that after a number of years of the most stringent opposition that any President has faced since before the Civil War (as measured, for example, by number of filibusters), Obama turned more to just focusing the base.
What hooey. Are you going to leave out Harry Reid's contribution to the mess? Or did you forget the years where he systematically prevented Republican ideas from even coming to the floor for a filibuster? When each side takes every chance it has to kick the other when its down its rich to make these one sided claims.
I don't think we can reach a meeting of the minds here. But I'd like to see your evidence for the opposite, particularly with respect to the interaction between Republicans and Obama in the first year of his Administration.
Do you have evidence you'd like us to refute, or is your case just anecdotal? I'm terribly swayed by the number of filibusters, or party line votes, unless you can control for substantive quality of what was being filibustered or voted against. It's certainly not true that
nothing got through the legislature.