How The Republican Party Should Deal With Barack Obama

21 Jan, 2009 by John Hawkins

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It’s easy to deal with your political opponents when you agree with them. For example, if Barack Obama wants to win the war in Iraq, kill Al-Qaeda, cut the capital gains tax, make abortion more difficult to get, etc., etc., that’s an easy decision. You don’t vote down a policy that you support just because you don’t like the guy who proposed it.

So, the real question is what should the Republican Party do when they oppose what Barack Obama is doing?

There are two schools of thought on this.

#1) The first — and most popular one in D.C. — is that Republicans should cooperate with Democrats and try to get a better bill. Sure, the bill may be horrible for the country, but if Republicans get involved, they can make it “less bad” and as a bonus, they can go back to their constituents and say, “I’m bipartisan and look at what I helped accomplish!”

#2) The second school of thought says, if you don’t agree with it, then don’t compromise. Instead, you fight tooth and nail for every inch of ground, emphasize the differences, and then run on opposing bad policies.

It’s worth noting that…

#1) The Democrats almost exclusively used strategy #2 over the last four years when they were beating the GOP into the ground.

#2) Conservatives are demoralized and extremely unhappy with the performance of the GOP. Strategy #1 will discourage them even further. Strategy #2 will fire them up and get them excited.

#3) A large portion of the agenda that Barack Obama is pushing is extremely bad for America. Card Check, socialized medicine, promoting abortion and gay marriage, enormous welfare payments via tax credits, the largest deficits in American history, it goes on and on and on. If Republicans aren’t even going to oppose those sort of policies, what good are they?

In short, Republicans should oppose, attack, undercut, kneecap, and kick Obama when he’s down at every opportunity. Call him out on every broken campaign promise. Question his motivations. Call him a liar. Don’t give him the benefit of the doubt. Remember that nice guys always finish last in Washington.

In other words, look back at what the Democrats did to George Bush, learn from it, and do an even better job of it. If Republicans want to help their country, if they want to help their party, if they want to do the best job they can for the American people, then they have to stop as much of Barack Obama’s agenda as humanly possible.

That’s the strategy we need to adopt.