Don鈥檛 mess with ‘BarackoMan’
The New Year was barely two hours old and Barack Obama won another victory. He’s on a roll.
Who is this guy who Republicans claim is incapable of a single deep thought but smart enough to send the country headlong into the trash heap of history — and sometimes in the same sentence? He’s BarackoMan!
Able to leap mountains of dyspeptic Republicans in a single bound. He can rescue the country from a “fiscal cliff” with a single stroke of a pen.
Oh, I know this kind of boasting can’t cause Republicans to swallow their pride (as if they ever had some) any easier. Nevertheless, at 2 a.m. on New Year’s morning, 89 U.S. Senators voted in favor of a stopgap economic plan that Obama, and his trusty sidekick — “Joltin” Joe Biden, forced Republicans to take or leave at their own political peril.
While there are still right-wing pundits trying to figure out how Mitt Romney lost to “this guy,” “this guy” just gave them a lesson on why “this guy” isn’t just any “guy.” He’s a force to be reckoned with. He’s BarackoMan!
All but a handful of Republicans in the Senate — (Marco Rubio (Florida), Mike Lee (Utah), Richard Shelby (Ala.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa)) — voted for raising taxes on individuals making 400K. These Republicans are big old tax-lovers when their backs are against the wall.
Faced with the prospect of a brand new recession, and the realities of BarackoMan’s 4,967,508-vote victory in November, Republicans buckled under the weight of their own common sense. They’ve been had. However, it was their own fault for grandstanding in the first place.
All of this seems familiar. Republicans did everything short of plotting Civil War to block ObamaCare. ObamaCare is not only the law of the land, but it has beaten back every legal challenge, and, in 2013, it will benefit more Americans.
And don’t forget, there was that phony flap over the debt ceiling in July of 2011. That was supposed to have been resolved by the country going over the “fiscal cliff,” on Jan. 1, 2013, if Congress and the President couldn’t come to an agreement on deficit reduction.
Well, Jan. 1, 2013, came and went, and only the president got his way, without any deficit reduction. Chalk-up another one for BarackoMan.
Hours before Republicans in the Senate voted overwhelmingly to go along with BarackoMan, they had some unkind words for him. He’d appeared with his supporters to reiterate his stand to get an agreement to avoid the “fiscal cliff.” He drew cheers when he told the crowd that the plan being worked on would raise taxes on the rich.
The speech, and obviously the cheering, didn’t sit well with the Senate’s leading Obama detractor, John McCain. “He kind of made fun, made a couple of jokes … sent a message of confrontation to the Republicans,” McCain said on the floor of the Senate. “That’s not the way presidents should lead,” growled the man who tried, but failed miserably, to become president.
But later that night, while most Americans were in bed, and many were nursing hangovers, when asked to vote on Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on the rich, McCain’s response was, “Aye.”
Bob Corker (GOP-Tennessee) also took issue with Obama’s tone during his midday appearance. The serious-minded Corker took to Twitter to express his disappointment. (Did you read that last sentence? If he was so serious-minded, why did he take his disappointment to Twitter?)
“I know the President has fun heckling Congress … he probably lost some votes,” Corker tweeted.
But when it was time for BarackoMan to “lose some votes,” Corker’s vote wasn’t one of them. He, like McCain, voted “Aye” when it was his turn.
The following night the members of the House of Representatives made their voices heard. There were far more “Ayes” than “Nays.”
Therefore, it really doesn’t matter if Republicans continue to grandstand. They’re falling in line. But who could ever blame them. They’re finally feeling the brute force of BarackoMan.
Look! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s …
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.