Letter to Editor: Republican obstruction continues

• 

 

• Posted Jan. 28, 2016 at 4:01 PM

  While President Barack Obama celebrated his inauguration at various balls on inauguration night, Jan. 20, 2009, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to sabotage his presidency at a private dinner in Washington, D.C.

  That night at the Caucus Room, a high-end D.C. establishment, Republican leadership plotted ways to win back political power by uniting as one to obstruct Obama's entire agenda. Present were prominent Republicans, including Newt Gingrich, Frank Luntz, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Jim DeMint, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and at least eight others. Their goal: a unified pact to filibuster governance, even while the banksters’ generated economic collapse was current event and public enemy No. 1.

  Stifling all of Obama’s “change” or “hope” began inauguration night with their commitment to obstruction by any means necessary. The Republican dinner-date vow to each other that night in January prioritized obstructing any opportunity of the newly elected president to advance his 2008 election landslide mandate. What negatively reflects on the Obama administration is naively failing to recognize how thoroughly congressional Republicans would oppose the priorities the overwhelming majority elected him to pursue.

  Politics trumped governance, dismissing negotiation. Republican politicians prioritized advancing their own voter-rejected political agenda, and that of their billionaire benefactors. Regaining the presidency, not recovery of the American economy, was their primary objective, and it still infects the ongoing state of the union.

  — Michael Cannariato, Rockford