Obama Using GOP's Confrontational Playbook To Take On Romney

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Barack Obama 2012 Takes Multiple Pages From GOP Playbook



WASHINGTON -- As he tries to become only the second Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to win reelection, Barack Obama is adopting much of the strategic playbook Republicans have developed and used for 40 years.

Of course, on the core substance of policy -- tax rates, regulation and the size and role of government in the economy -- Obama and the post-Reagan Tea Party Republicans couldn't be further apart as the fall campaign begins. And no matter how shrewd or cold-blooded his game plan, the president probably will lose if the economic outlook does not improve more by fall.

But campaign strategy does matter, and there the GOP has a track record and a theory that Obama has always found to his liking as a candidate.

It is more confrontational and definitive than the model used by Bill Clinton, who won election twice (but never with an outright majority) essentially by blurring his party's differences with a conservative GOP.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/13/barack-obama-2012-campaign-republican-playbook_n_1510801.html

[lunatica]

1. We wailed and wailed about how the Democrats don't fight back

Well President Obama is dominating the talking points and the discussion now. And I fully support him. He took away their Numero Uno wedge issue, the gay agenda and now they're left floundering in utter confusion and disarray.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

2. So far, so good.

He knows he's going to have to bust Romney UP. He knows he's going to have to fight for this. He knows the kind of crap that's been written and said about him since he was elected, and that it's only going to get worse as we get closer to November. He's going to have to take Romney down with a few well-landed blows. I have every confidence that he'll do that.

[Dawson Leery]

16. +1,000,000

[socialist_n_TN]

4. Yes we DID wail.............

And for good reason. See? It WORKS. Now if he'll just use a little more confrontational politics while GOVERNING maybe we can at least slow down the neoliberal agenda until we can get a MUCH more left leaning government.

[joshcryer]

6. He had to learn that bipartisanship doesn't work.

I truly believe he thought that he could make stuff happen by reaching across the isle.

Not that he's going to lose his Joe Cool demeanor.

[tblue37]

11. I think he always knew that. But as a Black man,

he also had to first prove that he is not an “angry” Black man, and he also had to sort of fly under the radar his first term to get anything at all done without totally destroying his chance at reelection.

Now he has proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to everyone (that is, everyone who can think past his or her own intransigent bigotry) that he has to do what he has to do. He has shown the Republicans to be the absolute obstructionists that they are, unwilling to do anything to help the American people for fear it might improve Obama’s reelection chances.

My guess is that he plans and has always planned to move further left in his second term, when it will not destroy his chance to be reelected to complete the work he has begun.

[watrwefitinfor]

12. +100 n/t

[joshcryer]

14. You make a very good point, had he started off as a loud partisan he may have never been elected.

Excellent post.

[tibbiit]

3. the second democrat since FDR?

Isnt that a wrong statement? Truman and Clinton... he is the third. dumb asses.
tib

[joshcryer]

5. Truman succeeded, he didn't "get elected President" the first time, thus it is a true statement.

[tibbiit]

7. That was a dipshit way to write the paragraph

imo. misleading then.
tib

[joshcryer]

8. Just trying to be controversial, imo.

JFK would've likely been re-elected.

[starroute]

10. I think it was intentionally misleading

Jimmy Carter was the only incumbent Democratic president to be defeated since -- who? Grover Cleveland, probably. And Cleveland was elected again four years later.

In contrast, Truman, Johnson, and Clinton all ran as incumbents and won. Truman won against pretty considerable odds and Johnson won in a landslide.

So it took some pretty complicated contortions to make it seem as though Democratic presidents regularly have trouble being reelected.

[joshcryer]

15. Yeah, they either died in office or were killed. So it is misleading.

The Democrats have had just as many 3 terms in power as the Republicans in the past 75-100 years or so since the Democratic party was formed (too lazy to check the actual date).

[msongs]

9. clinon once elected once, then twice, therefore - reelected nt

[quaker bill]

13. Clinton was the first.

Obama would be the second.