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Republicans Must Get Wise to Obama’s Hard-Line Fiscal Strategy

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesJudging from the speech Obama gave following the deal to end the government shutdown, Republicans better get wise to the president’s next fiscal gambit when the three-month stop-gap budget and debt measures come due. As was the case with his hard-line defense of Obamacare, the president likely will be inflexible on ending sequestration budget caps, pushing for massive tax hikes, and permitting only the most inconsequential entitlement reforms.

Obama is interested in busting the GOP in 2014. He’s not interested in true budget restraint or other economic-growth measures.

Example: This week, instead of a conciliatory work-together message for the negotiations ahead, President Obama gave us another Republican scold speech: “All of us need to stop focusing on lobbyists and bloggers and talking heads on radio, and professional activists who profit from conflict.”

But of course, it was Obama who wouldn’t negotiate. And it was Obama and his followers who demonized the GOP with words like “hostage,” “ransom,” and “terrorists.”

Another example: Out of nowhere in his post-shutdown speech, the president pledged to “close these corporate-tax loopholes that don’t help create jobs, and freeze up resources for the things that do help us grow, like education and infrastructure and research.”

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Obama to Republicans: ‘Go Win an Election’

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Photo Credit: APBy Dan Weil.

In an apparent attempt to rub Republicans’ noses in their defeat on the debt ceiling conflict, President Barack Obama said Thursday that they should “win an election” if they want to change his policies.

“To all my friends in Congress, understand that how business is done in this town has to change,” Obama said in a statement to reporters at the White House.

“You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. But don’t break it.”

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‘Win an election’ is Obama’s new catchphrase

By CNBC.

“Go out there and win an election” may be the one thing everyone remembers about the government shutdown of 2013.

That was President Barack Obama’s mantra on Thursday, hours after Congress passed a deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling.

Obama, widely seen as having won the fight with House Republicans, used an address to condemn Congress for the budget fight and to try and set priorities for the next year.

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Obama: Founding Fathers Would NOT Have Approved (+video)

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Photo Credit: APA stern President Obama lectured Republicans on Thursday, one day after they accepted a Democrat deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt limit until Feb. 7–getting nothing in return.

The president suggested that the system of checks and balances invoked by tea party Republicans in an attempt to defund Obamacare is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

“Let’s work together to make government work better, instead of treating it like an enemy or purposely making it work worse,” Obama said.

“That’s not what the founders of this nation envisioned when they gave us the gift of self-government.

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Obama Romneyizes the Republicans

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Photo Credit: Chad Crowe One of the more compelling finds in the opinion-polling swamps is that most people would like to see the entire Congress replaced. A more modest proposal: Let’s replace all the Republicans in Congress with their children or grandchildren. Bring in the 15-year-olds. How could it get worse?

From the House to the Senate, the Republicans look dazed and confused. Three weeks ago, Ted Cruz stood in the Senate chamber for nearly a day, looking like a hero. Today, with the GOP brand in a vertical dive, he looks like a Bozo balloon.

What do children know that the Republicans in Congress don’t know? The kids know, because it is the mother’s milk of their battery-powered lives, that if you don’t recognize shifts in the mighty flows of information, you will be swept aside, abandoned. You will be BlackBerry. BB.T +0.24%

For all the changes in information delivery, not much ever changes for the GOP’s messaging skills.

Wind back to the 2012 presidential election. Recall how after it was over, the GOP promised that it would duplicate the incredible modern messaging machine the Obama team created across every available new-information platform. That delivery system was why across four years Barack Obama kept hammering “the 1%” and “the wealthiest.” He was feeding the machine that was emailing, texting and tweeting this propaganda to targeted audiences.

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Surprise! GOP, Dems Playing for Same Team

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Photo Credit: WNDMore of America seems to be catching on to the fact that – while we have two political parties – they aren’t in fact the ones that are labeled Republican and Democrat.

Perhaps these two unlabeled parties should be given names. Let’s call them the Potomics and the Outcasts. You know, those inside and outside the moat that surrounds the castles of government in Washington, D.C.

I confess to having been snookered by this game myself on too many occasions. When election time rolls around, the game works like the good-cop, bad-cop routine in crime novels. The two cops drag the suspect into the interrogation room, and the bad cop wants to beat the confession out of the guy.

The good cop is more sympathetic and holds the bad cop at bay. Given the suspect’s circumstances, his actions were entirely understandable, even if they were wrong. But certainly a court would consider leniency in return for a confession. To the suspect, watching the bad cop ranting and raving in the background, this seems like a plan.

And so, most of America has continued to vote Republican or Democrat, because it seemed like a plan. We simply did not recognize that they were both on the same team.

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Limbaugh: Obama’s Approval Down to 37% and Republicans Still Think They’re Losing?

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Photo Credit: Rush Limbaugh RUSH: So Bo Snerdley walks into my compound here, broadcast facility, oh, I guess about an hour ago. And he’s somewhat stuttering, trying to pay me a compliment. He says, “How did you… I mean, well, I know you know, but how did you… how did you…” I said, “What are you talking about?”

“How did you know we were winning this?” He had just seen the AP story with Obama’s approval rating at 37%. Grab sound bite number two. Barack Obama’s approval rating at 37%. That fact is in an AP story. Would you like to hear the headline of that AP story? I have it right here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. “Poll: GOP Gets The Blame In Shutdown.” And then if you read the story, you find out that as an incidental item, the president of the United States’ approval number is at 37%.

This is before that insulting, juvenile, petulant, spoiled-rotten little kid press conference from yesterday, about which there was not one question asked about Obamacare and its rollout. Not one question in that presser yesterday. We have also learned that the Park Service and Obama okayed a pro-amnesty immigration reform rally on the National Mall that is closed to everybody else, including World War II vets. Nancy Pelosi and a number of Democrats, who are, I think, in a time warp, a bunch of them went over there and got arrested as though this is still the 1960s. John Lewis got arrested. Charlie Rangel got arrested, as though it’s some badge of honor to get arrested. These people are totally tone-deaf.

The president’s at 37%. The shutdown is going on. Now we learn that five military families were insulted profoundly with the way the deaths of their service member relatives were treated. Folks, it is obvious that this administration is acting purposely to inconvenience and to harm people it considers its political enemies. Why in the world, in the middle of this, when you’re losing, why call that press conference yesterday and why go out there and keep saying, “I’m willing to negotiate” and this sort of thing, why do that on the same day that you are permitting — I mean, you talk about a thumb in the eye. You talk about almost being spat upon to allow the closed — because of the shutdown — National Mall to open up for a pro-amnesty immigration rally. The people allowed in there were illegal. They were not American citizens.

Meanwhile, outside the fences, not permitted in, American citizens, World War II vets and their families are not allowed to go to the World War II Memorial. And the Democrats and the media and the president somehow think that this is adding up to their benefit? Here’s Pelosi yesterday. Grab sound bite 13. This is Pelosi yesterday on the National Mall during a rally in favor of amnesty, comprehensive immigration reform.

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Democrats to America: We Own the Government!

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Photo Credit: APIn the current fight over the government shutdown, Republicans are simply representing the views of the American people.

Americans didn’t ask for Obamacare, they don’t want it, but now their insurance premiums are going through the roof, their doctors aren’t accepting it, and their employers are moving them into part-time work — or firing them — to avoid the law’s mandates.

Contrary to Obama’s promises, it turns out: You can’t keep your doctor, you can’t keep your insurance — you can’t even keep your job. In other words, it’s a typical government program, but this one wrecks your health care.

Also, the president did raise taxes on the middle class in defiance of his well-worn campaign promise not to. Indeed, Obamacare is the largest tax hike in U.S. history.

Among the other changes effected by this law are:

— Obamacare will allow insurers to charge 50 percent higher premiums for smokers, but prohibits insurers from increasing premiums for those with HIV/AIDS.

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Obama: ‘I’m Not Budging’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller President Barack Obama tried Tuesday to sway the public’s jaundiced view of the budget crisis with a mishmash of economic threats, campaign-style attacks on Republicans, repeated offers of budget talks and numerous promises to reject any compromise.

“I’m not budging when it comes to the full faith and credit of the United States…I think people understand that,” Obama told reporters in the White House’s press office.

The threat came shortly after he suggested he’d be willing to accept a budget deal that would require the GOP to abandon its Obamacare reforms in exchange for subsequent chats with him about ways to improve the effectiveness of his health-sector takeover.

During the hour-long press conference and speaking in a low, calm voice, Obama slammed the GOP as deadbeats and extremists, as kidnappers, as unserious and insincere. He portrayed them as opposed to health care and as threatening to drop a “nuclear bomb” on the nation’s economy, while repeatedly also praising himself as willing to compromise and negotiate.

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Republicans Didn’t Sabotage Health Exchanges, Obama Did

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Photo Credit: Ken James/BloombergFor the first week that the federal health-care exchanges were running … well, crawling … the Obama administration claimed that no one could get through because of overwhelming pent-up demand. Essentially it spent a week arguing that no one could have predicted that, in a country of 300 million people, 2.4 percent of those people might stop by sometime in the first seven days to check out the administration’s signature legislative achievement.

We can now dismiss that theory, because the administration has: “Six days into the launch of insurance marketplaces created by the new health-care law, the federal government acknowledged for the first time Sunday it needed to fix design and software problems that have kept customers from applying online for coverage.”

Presumably, it would not have given that interview if its efforts to fix the systems had been successful this weekend. The Hill reports that the system will go offline again late tonight for more repairs.

So prepare yourself for the next theory: This is the fault of Republicans. Had Republicans created state exchanges as they were supposed to, agreed to the Medicaid expansion and provided more funding, the reasoning goes, everything would be going swimmingly.

I blame the Republicans for a lot of things, from their support for atrocious farm policies to the counterproductive showdown theater that is: 1. Wreaking havoc on everything from government data websites to the Smithsonian; 2. Not saving any money, because we just agreed to pay furloughed workers; 3. Not noticeably advancing the cause of repealing Obamacare; and 4. Grinding down the public’s opinion of the Republican Party from a stump to a hole.

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Republicans Press Obama to Back FEMA Funding Bill as Storm Nears

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Photo Credit: Fox News Screenshot

Photo Credit: Fox News Screenshot

The budget showdown is about to collide with a major weather event.

The House voted Friday to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as Republicans cast the bill as an emergency measure to help Americans threatened by the approaching tropical storm.

“This is about people’s lives, people’s businesses,” Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, said.

The bill was one of several House Republicans have pushed in recent days to fund chunks of the government amid the partial government shutdown.

They’ve been pressuring Democrats, with little success, to support these mini-spending measures while the budget impasse drags on. Republicans upped that pressure on Friday, saying disaster response is critical as Tropical Storm Karen tracks toward the Gulf Coast and is poised to hit this weekend.

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