Obama's Big Break (Down)

Obama casts finger of blame in wrong place

August 2009 will be remembered as a very bad month for the President of the United States.

With September 2009 not beginning on any better a note, US President Barack Obama lashed out against his adversaries yesterday, accusing them of using "scare tactics" to curtail his health care reform package.

"Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics," Obama thundered. "Some have dug into unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise. Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge. And out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned."

Obama insisted he's as determined as ever to pass his reform bill.

"I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last," he insisted. "It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health care reform."

But for Obama to blame the Republicans for his (to date) failure to pass his health care reform package is more than a little rich. As Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter has noted, it's Obama's own party that won't pass his bill.

"Their own Democrats don't like it or the bill would have been passed," McCotter said on an interview on ForaTV. "They can pass whatever they want. In the House majority rules. In the Senate they got 60. It's Democrats that find this health care bill to be too repugnant to vote for. All the yelling about 'going it alone', they've been doing that from the beginning. All the attacks on the Republicans all the smears on the tea party and the grassroots activists and the normal people who rise up against this bill. Sideshow."

"As a practical legislative matter if Democrats support the administration's plan it would have been done by now," he added. "If Democrats support the administration's plan it would get done in September."

"What we witnessing is an internal debate amongst the Democratic party and what they're finding is that if you start a bill from the left with [Henry] Waxman, [Geoge] Miller and [Nancy] Pelosi, three millionaires from California, you have trouble getting to the centre of American politics because your own people don't want to do it," he continued.

If Barack Obama wanted to take umbrage with political activists using fear tactics, he would need look no further than MSNBC's Contessa Brewer, Rachel Maddow or Dr Andy Opel.

But not only does Obama not want to cast a finger of blame at his own supporters, he won't cast that finger of blame at his own Congress members and Senators who won't pass his legislation.

Barack Obama may have looked good to his base, blasting off on his partisan opponents. But for Obama to refuse to take responsibility for his own party's disinclination to support his own legislation falls far, far short of statesmanlike.