Barack Obama - Operation Political Revenge

With the Christofascists/Tea Party loons still shrieking over Obamacare (which is successfully lowering the number of uninsured Americans), wailing over Obama's executive order on immigration and now traumatized by Obama's action on normalizing relations with Cuba, for a lame duck president, Barack Obama has certainly stirred the political pot and caused upheaval among his political enemies.  Frankly, it is fun to watch as the party of "No" ponders how to respond beyond merely stamping its collective feet and emitting plumes of spittle.  A piece in Politico looks at how Obama has turned the tables on his foes.  Here are excerpts:

It’s taken Obama – who spuriously predicted the 2012 election would break the “fever” of partisan gridlock – two miserable years to approach the level of presidential liberation he believes he earned that night. Yet there was always something slightly off about the idea that Obama would do better without a campaign in his future. The truth, according to current and former aides, is that the absence of a presidential election – the natural Obama habitat – actually contributed to the ennui and frustration that has hallmarked most of his second term.

Obama’s turnaround in recent weeks – he’s seized the offensive with a series of controversial executive actions and challenges to leaders in his own party on the budget — can be attributed to a fundamental change in his political mindset, according to current and former aides. He’s gone from thinking of himself as a sitting (lame) duck, they tell me, to a president diving headlong into what amounts to a final campaign – this one to preserve his legacy, add policy points to the scoreboard, and – last but definitely not least – to inflict the same kind of punishment on his newly empowered Republican enemies, who delighted in tormenting him when he was on top.

Obama, a political counterpuncher who often needs a slap in the face to wake up, got a gut-shot in November. The Democrats’ staggering loss in the midterms – like his disastrous performance in the first presidential debate against Mitt Romney in 2012 – seems to have jolted him to the realization that he’ll have to act boldly to preserve what he’d assumed was a settled legacy. (The Supreme Court’s decision to scrutinize the funding mechanism of the Affordable Care Act, in particular, has sent a shudder through the West Wing and provided an unexpected challenge from another hostile branch of government.)

[H]e can legitimately describe himself as an underdog. He feels at liberty to address any topic he chooses on his own terms — race, for instance — and, most importantly, he’s increasingly untethered from what he views as a petty, geriatric Democratic establishment he originally crusaded against as a presidential candidate in 2007.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says Obama’s newly aggressive stance – exemplified by his unilateral moves on immigration and Cuba – poses an early challenge to new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and to House Speaker John Boehner, who are trying to re-shape the GOP into a party that can actually run a government. “Mitch and Boehner have to deal with the fact that Obama is becoming bolder and more radical,” Gingrich told me a few days before Obama announced his move to normalize relations with Cuba.

Obama says he’s just taking action to deal with fundamental problems that a gridlocked, hopelessly partisan Congress won’t address. His executive action on immigration and his Cuba move this week represent only the highest-profile unilateral steps he’s taken this year. Under the direction of White House Counselor John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff who has spurred the president to use executive power, Obama has issued dozens of orders and lower-profile memoranda redefining U.S. policies on emissions and wilderness area protections, created a new class of retirement accounts for low-income workers, capped student loan payments and toughened some firearms background checks.

But the truth of the matter is that Obama’s very good 2014 could turn into a check-mated 2015. The House isn’t likely to pass anything significant – or veto-proof – on immigration, but Republicans can, and likely will, block his Cuba policy by upholding the embargo and refusing to fund line items like the cost of building and staffing an embassy in Havana. “Congress is going to be a very different place than it was during the last few weeks if this year — there are still a lot of things that are on the president’s list that has go through Congress,” says former Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. “The question for the White House is not ‘What?’ it’s ‘How?’ … There’s two lists: The list of things you have to convince others to do and the list of things you can do without other people. They are going through the last list first.”