Word: gop
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...Republicans still chafe at being labeled as the party of no; House Republican Conference chairman Mike Pence claimed last Friday that Obama's visit to talk to the GOP caucus had validated their contention that they have legitimate policy ideas of their own. But there is no doubt that the obstructionist strategy helped bolster the beleaguered fiscal-conservative arm of the Republican Party. After eight years of growing the government under the Bush Administration, creating new entitlements and funding bridges to nowhere, their reputation was in shreds. "It was a very dangerous strategy because, if the stimulus worked, the Republicans...
...members felt comfortable in taking that political risk against a popular President if we had a credible alternative, and we did," Cantor says. Critics will surely debate just how credible those alternatives really were - their budget proposal, for instance, would have done away with Medicare. But the GOP came up with enough proposals of their own to give Republicans cover to vote nearly unilaterally against the stimulus, the budget, the climate-change bill and, of course, health care reform. (See a review of Barack Obama's first year in office...
...that time, House Republican leaders were facing a newly elected Democratic President with approval ratings in the 70s and an economy in the tank. After two bruising election cycles in which the GOP lost the White House and both the House and Senate, pundits were predicting they might be at the dawn of another 40-year stint in the minority. President Obama was publicly reaching out to Republicans on the massive stimulus bill, but something made House minority leader John Boehner and No. 2 House Republican Eric Cantor pause at the idea of working hand in hand with Obama...
...They traveled to the White House on Friday, Jan. 23, 2009, to present Obama with their ideas for the stimulus bill. They weren't greatly encouraged, though, when Obama told them at that meeting in the Roosevelt Room that "elections have consequences, and I won." Over the weekend, the GOP leadership met, and by the time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a deal on the legislation late Sunday, they were sure that nothing they had proposed was included in the measure...
...Super Bowl parties and photo-op Oval Office visits Obama has held with Republicans, Democrats have relied too heavily on their wide majorities in both chambers to ram legislation through, says Doug Heye, a GOP strategist. "There was never any follow-up to those feints at bipartisanship," Heye says...