Mr. Bush Obama has reacted by railing against Democrats Republicans for obstruction – as if Democrats Republicans are duty-bound to breathe life into his agenda and, even sillier, as if opposing a plan that the people do not want is an illegitimate tactic for an opposition party.

What is the percentage of responders that feel congress is not liberal enough? How many think they have abandoned their base?

Anger at democrats does not necesarrily translate into a more centrist congress

I agree with Hugh Hewitt – this could be a great opportunity to popularize Rep. Paul Ryan’s roadmap.

(this wasn’t supposed to be in the other thread)

I agree WWS. In fact here is Paul Ryan’s Roadmap.

I would have thought conservatives would have been more anti-socialists than Repubs as a party.

I know I am. I identify myself as conserv first, Repub 2nd.

Poor Paul’s proposal is not even dry and the far left and far right are denouncing its provisions. Whe Paul Ryan becomes Speaker of the House it will be different to have someone govern from the center as opposed to Delay and Hastert who ran the House from the right. Ryan will have a chance because the center-right will move to the center (RINOs all), but (and this is a big but), will the center-left join in to pass some sensible legislation?

BTW, on the Senate side, I beginning to call 2010 the revenge of the moderates. Brown, Ayotte, Kirk, Lowden, Norton, Campbell (CA), Simmons (I hope the CT Republicans are smart), and maybe Thompson in WI and Pataki in NY.

(this wasn’t supposed to be in the other thread)

Good post AJ.

Or to put it more accurately, he has just made a pretty good bid to drive his own personal popularity numbers back up, but he’s selling all the congressional dem’s down the river. I think they’re going to figure that out pretty fast.

I’m talking about Obama’s call to the Republicans to have a health care summit and to put forth their own ideas for reforming health care. This is what should have been done last summer, of course, and will go a good way towards reviving the image of Obama as a bipartisan figure, willing to be the President of *all*, not just the far left. That’s certainly why he’s doing it.

BUT – this is going to be the death of any Health Care Bill, and the death of the Congressional Dems who supported it. Why? Because it’s gotten too far along for any Republican to support it as it is. The entire structure, put together without any input even from Snowe or Collins is impossible to support. There’s no small fixes to this bill that can be made now – if he really wants GOP ideas, this bill needs to be scrapped and drafting the bill need to be restarted from scratch.

Here’s the problem – there’s no time left for that this year. There are too many other things to do, and the constant debate over this bill is the steady drip, drip, drip of poison onto the approval numbers of this Congress. The more they talk about it and do nothing, the more disgusted all sides – including the left – get with them. (That’s why their numbers are dropping so much lately, even the left is bailing) Republicans can simply play for time – the longer this is debated, the more the public hates Congress. Talk all the way up to the election, then! But the Left in the House is too strong to ever let any GOP compromise bill through, so in the end nothing will happen – stalemate. And all that effort will simply reinforce the view that this is a hopeless, dysfunctional Congress that needs to be completely replaced, which is exactly the narrative the GOP wants to have in place going into this November.

Will it make Obama look better? Temporarily – but when it becomes clear that in the end this only led to more failure, that pop will fade and his administration will have failed on almost every major initiative. Plus, even his own team will start to hate him as they realize he sold them out in an attempt to save himself.

Gonna be fun to watch, though.