However, GOPers are finally beginning to get it-a little:
“The public is not behind us, and that’s a real problem for our party,” said Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, a Republican who has clashed with his party’s leadership."
"Newt Gingrich, the last Republican speaker to face a re-elected Democratic president, said that Republicans could not be seen as simply saying no to the president."
“You can take specific things he said that you agree with, emphasize those, and take the things you don’t agree with and propose alternatives,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/us/politics/obama-speech-leaves-gop-stark-choices.html?_r=0
"As Mr. Obama’s second term begins, Republican leaders appear ready to accede at least in the short term on matters like increasing the debt limit."
"Their decision shows that even among some staunch conservatives, Mr. Obama’s inauguration could be ushering in a more pragmatic tone — if not necessarily a shift in beliefs. From the stimulus to the health care law to showdowns over taxes and spending, Republicans have often found that their uncompromising stands simply left them on the sidelines, unable to have an impact on legislation and unable to alter it much once it passed."
"Even in the budget impasses that forced spending cuts sought by conservatives, the Republicans’ ultimate goals — changes to entitlement programs and the tax code — have been out of reach.
Now, some in the party say, it is time to take a different tack."
“We’re too outnumbered to govern, to set policy,” said Representative John Fleming, a Louisiana Republican who has taken confrontational postures in the past. “But we can shape policy as the loyal opposition.”
A loyal opposition for Obama. Who would ever have thought we'd see the day. In 2009 the Republicans were in a contest to see which of them could be the most disloyal in their opposition. They had vowed to oppose anything he proposed-even if it were an idea they agreed with.
I notice that Paul Ryan is complaining that Obama referenced him in the inauguration speech-for his comment about "takers." He says that's unfair because he doesn't consider people in Social Security and Medicare "takers" as they have paid into it.
Exactly. But if Republicans agree that people on SS and Medicare aren't on welfare they sure have never sounded like it in the past-certainly neither Romney's "inelegant" 47% comments or Ryan's previous comments.
"The president’s inaugural speech set Republicans on edge. Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s vice-presidential nominee last year, said Mr. Obama had used “straw man arguments” in taking an implicit swipe at Mr. Ryan when he said that programs like Medicare and Social Security “do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take risks that make this country great.”
"The president’s inaugural speech set Republicans on edge. Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s vice-presidential nominee last year, said Mr. Obama had used “straw man arguments” in taking an implicit swipe at Mr. Ryan when he said that programs like Medicare and Social Security “do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take risks that make this country great.”
"Mr. Ryan said that his own past references to “takers” did not refer to programs that people had paid into over their lives, and that the president was distorting the Republican stance."
“When the president does kind of a switcheroo like that, what he’s trying to say is that we are maligning these programs that people have earned throughout their working lives,” he said on the Laura Ingraham talk-radio program.
I am sincerely glad to hear him say that. Yet, if so, why does he want to destroy Medicare?
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