…there is a huge problem in the GOP.
The new right winged talking point for the GOP is that the Democrats in Congress voted against Obama’s budget unanimously. But did they?
In searching for what really happened (because The Hill, The Washington Times, The American Thinker and many other right wing rags cannot seem to report the whole story and only seem to wish to make this an embarrassment for President Obama) I came across this article from of all places Fox news. They were actually responsible enough to state the reason why the House Democrats voted against it. (Here is a hint, it is not because they disagree with Obama).
Democrats said Republicans had forced a vote on a version of Obama’s budget that contained only its numbers, not the policies he would use to achieve them.
So there you have it. What the GOP put up for a vote in the House was not the entirety of what President Obama proposed. It was just the numbers. But Fox didn’t just stop there.
House Republicans last tried this same tactic in 2000 on President Clinton’s budget.
House Democrats floated three of President Reagan’s budgets in the 1980s. Those budgets collected 28, 15 and one votes, respectively.
The GOP savior Ronald Reagan had a budget get one vote. This means most Republicans voted against a Reagan budget because the Democrats at the time tried this same, disingenuous, tactic. I wonder how many of today’s conservative tabloids papers would have defended Reagan way back when.
I’m a Democrat who never saw Barack Obama as a Messiah because like him I aladrey have one. I am a Democrat who realizes Barack Obama is facing a combination of problems the likes of which no president has faced before because the Brooklyn neighborhood where I live has had to deal with the realities of these problems since Reagan.I’m a Democrat who recognizes Barack Obama has made the right if not popular decisions because I remember it was a horse-trading Texan, not a millionaire from Boston, MA who got the Civil Rights Act through Congress.I’m a Democrat who knows how mean Republicans can be because I know when they’re talking about taking America back they’re talking about taking it back to a day when people who look like me had to step in the street when people who look like them walked by. I also know how mean Democrats can be because I watched how the party establishment treated Barack Obama before he became inevitable.I’m a Democrat who finds Barack Obama’s positive thinking a Godsend because I have long tired of the Democrats’ eight long years of whining about the Bush Administration while the majority of them decided to imitate their Republican counterparts.The glass half full syndrome is not peculiar to Democrats. It is part of the American psyche which is conditioned to believe it is normal to want what it wants when it wants it.I don’t think the White House thinks I’m stupid because for once the White House has someone who has experienced some of my reality first hand. I think it is those who see America solely from the vantage point of White male privilege (a point of view not only held by Whites or males) be they on the right or the left who think the Democrats are in trouble for any of the five reasons listed above.If and I do mean if the Democrats (now read Democratic Party) are in trouble it’s because they didn’t see what Barack Obama’s win really was: a chance to finally say welcome to the Fannie Lou Hamers of society as well as those of us in the party who are sick and tired of being sick and tired. But they couldn’t and they didn’t and that’s the trouble.Rev. Anna Taylor Sweringen