Barack Obama went to Capitol Hill to romance all the Republicans who swore up and down they would not pass the stimulus bill unless it contained more TAXCUTS TAXCUTS, and less money for contraception and grass seed.
Congressional Republicans were very flattered and excited to get a visit from the actual president, and this is a sort of sad thing, isn't it, that members of the opposition party would be so pleasantly surprised that the president would deign to talk to them about major legislation? But we must remember that for eight long years, the previous president never spoke with members of Congress -- not even in his own party -- unless he wanted to let them know that he had started another war over the weekend.
So Obama went and spoke with Republicans for two whole hours, and at the end of it everybody agreed it was very nice of him to visit but nothing had substantively changed. Why, it's almost as if Democrats tend to favor spending plans while Republicans favor tax cuts! How will these two crazy parties ever get along?
Who possibly could have foreseen that the election of our new superhero president would fail to realign the philosophical underpinnings of the two parties that have dominated American politics for the past 150 years? Guess this Obama isn't so magical after all! Bipartisanship is a sham, or dead, or both; Obama's honeymoon with Congress is officially over; and his failure to bring about complete and instantaneous accord throughout the halls of government makes Barack Obama about the biggest failure since James Buchanan.
Sara K. Smith runs a nonpartisan think tank out of her spare bedroom and also writes for Wonkette.
