its demands aren t met. that happened with the debt ceiling fight and now over disaster aid. in effect, cantor and his allies are threatening to take hurricane victims hostage using their suffering as a bargaining chip. will republicans block anything the president proposes? yes. here s why. back to peter s point a few moments ago in terms of passions. what republicans see and smell is blood. they see a weakened president and have seen it time and time on again on everything from gitmo, on everything from the health care issue as it relates to the public option. time and time again this president has went up to the door and said, you know what? i want to work in a bipartisan way, but i m willing to negotiate on x, y and z. republicans have pushed back and won every single time. you see an emboldened republican party not because of what the democrats say. they re emboldened because the president has caved on many
this move this country forward and work with republicans and yet again they slam the door not only in my face but in bipartisanship s face. that s the overall theme of what the president is running on next year, running against on a do-nothing congress. truman did that in 1948. he s going to try to paint this running against washington and the republican partisans, if you will. we ll see if, in fact, that actually works. what republicans will say is, yeah, we re stopping president obama in his tracks, and the reason why is because we ve given him three years of trying to fix the economy and nothing has worked. so you better believe we re trying to stop this, because we don t believe in the direction where he s taking the country. zee peter, do you think the president is raising the stakes by convening this jointd session of congress? can he deliver on all these heightened expectations? he has to do this, alex. the fact is that the president was instrumental in stabilizing