If Obama were dealing with old-timer Repubs. like Goldwater, Taft, ...etc....he

might have been doing quite well. But with the present-day Neocon psychopaths,
Obama is like a fish out of water. He simply doesn't know how to handle them.
He is totally out of his element.

It's quite apparent that Obama cannot deal effectively with people who are not
only aggressive, but also half-way mad. Many people are simply afraid of
the crazies.

First I laughed because those people are long gone and then I wondered why someone would try to dig them up.

wanted to point out the difference.

There were also some crazily conservative Democrats, mostly holdovers from the segregated South and a few from the West. Both parties had a far wider spectrum of conservative to extremely liberal than they do now.

been replaced by the Neocons, who joined them some 3 or 4 decades ago,
worked their way up the ranks, usurped the power of the leaders and
kicked them out.

The average person who votes Republican doesn't even know that the GOP
no longer exists, because the Neocons were smart enough to keep the
Republican name so as to continue getting the vote of the old-timer
Republicans.

Democrats never took advantage of pointing this out. If Dems. had
used the word Neocon instead of Republican and explained why, more of
the old-timers would have left the Neocons. I know a few who did.

It's still not too late to start. But then, Dems., this is your own
decision to make.

the republicans are batshit crazy, and there is NO sane way of dealing with them. They only understand a 2X4 to the head, and it would be unseemly for the president to be walking around like Buford Pusser (although it would be entertaining). President Camacho could deal with todays republicans

His followers took control of the Republican Party, driving away moderates and old-time Republicans. LBJ's landslide was a vast relief. The idea of Goldwater in the White House was terrifying.

I know that Goldwater mellowed later, and seemed especially mellow compared to the even crazier types who took over the GOP in subsequent years, but let's not go too far in dignifying him now. He broke the barriers keeping the real loons out and paved the way for the crazies.

to the wackos of today.

On this issue, Obama is more right wing than Goldwater.

I know he favored gays serving openly in the military but don't remember him ever favoring gay marriage, at least not while he was still in the Senate.

n/t

did the damage, even though Nixon himself was a freaking liberal compared to most of today's Republicans. Reagan was the one who steered straight for crazy and is more than anyone responsible for what the R's are today.

is very common. The more brains you have, the bigger your disadvantage. There tends to be an innate effort to figure out why, where, how, when, etc. With crazies like Tea Baggers, the complete lack of any connection to reality makes that effort pointless, even frustrating.

with expert mental health professionals on how to deal with psychopaths.
The Neocons are not normal people, and they should be dealt with differently.
Of course, even if one of Obama's aides had read such a post, they probably
wouldn't tell their boss about it. :o)

when he's proved to be stronger than any other President I've known in my years of political activism.

He's gotten through what he could with the Congress we've sent him. He isn't a "fish out of water", by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly NOT because of so-called uber-strong and uber-recalcitrant Repukes, but in spite of pro-corporate, pro-business, and pro-war, pro-profit RepubliDEMS that have the majority in our Democratic caucus.

I thought that would be clear to anyone who witnessed, in horror, may I add, how the Dems fought this president from the moment he tried to close Gitmo and bring the prisoners into our country for trial - the way Congressional Dems campaigned on and wailed, just to get reelected. I was astounded they'd vote, almost en masse, against President Obama's request and campaign promise, siding with Republicans that had vowed, from the start, to make President Obama a one-term president.

And then there's Republican abuse of the filibuster rule. They've been abusing that rule - which stalled and killed single-payer, a public option, bankruptcy reform - since 2007, but knowing this has not resulted in Dems - who could've reformed the filibuster rule twice now - to change it.

I'm sorry, but your post is utterly wrong in the facts.

:sarcasm:

While every single one of them may be racists, they would oppose him just the same if he were white, black, or orange.

did the same thing to Clinton. I think they will try to destroy any president
who is not one of their own, regardless of color. Their goal is to destroy
democracy and turn this country into a dictatorship -- with themselves as the
masters, and the rest of us their servants.

Quit pretending it is just a matter of "handling" them. They have a majority of the House.

a great deal of experience in dealing with psychopaths, so that
he would understand how their minds work -- their desires, their
drives, their fears....etc.... It would him to understand them
better, and this, in turn, would help him to better deal with them.

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Blaming the crazies.
Not that I mean to disparage people who are truly mentally ill for their delusions or questionable behavior.
The neocons are not crazy...they are mean and greedy!!!!

about his mettle ...

You seriously think, after working side by side with them in the Senate, and seeing how they operated during Bushco, he didn't know what he was dealing with?

The problem here, is people who don't have his stomache.

I have a much shorter fuse and would have went at these clowns pretty darn hard by now, but it is pretty apparent to me that BO is one smart cookie, and does things HIS way - he is zen about this shiite, and if you can't stomache it, that is your problem.

The man TWICE now has ordered the execution of bad guys - first time he was rolling eggs on the white house lawn when Somalian pirates were getting bullets in their mellons. Second time, he was rubbing elbows with the press when OBL was getting taken out.

Sorry, he is one cool customer. I don't agree with him on some issues (not letting the Bush tax cuts expire), but I can see his steel ..

were OBL and Somali pirates! He'd be able to handle them.

For the first two years of this administration, there was a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. Apparently Obama's "mettle" didn't work with them, either, because the only recognizably Democratic legislation we got out of them came at the very end, in the lame-duck session.

But he's not. And the crazies he deals with, have crazy people who voted for them.

Those crazies come to about 1/3rd of the voting public. And sadly, they have a direct impact on policy in this country because they make up about half of the GOP.

Until we push the GOP out from every office where we find them, these nuts will work endlessly to destroy the country so Jesus will come back.

They cannot be bargained with or appeased. There is no rational basis on which to "meet them half way", and certainly there is no sense in giving the least hint of credibility to their maniacal ravings.

They are wrong and should be fought tooth and nail to the last breath rather than treated as partners in governance with legitimate viewpoints.

Keep in mind, they will roll over us like a tank going over a marshmallow given half a chance.

Their failed and demonstrably false ideology should be attacked relentlessly. They will not be convinced and they have NOTHING constructive to offer to the national debate.

We will not push them from office by pretending their nonsense has any merit and assimilating their positions which inevitably results in them moving to a more extreme position because the spectrum of the conversation is ceded entirely to their terms which means even if our folks win, they are still pushing the same failed premises.

One can never profit by selling their soul and one can never break the will of the opposition by surrender.

There will be no real "pushing out" with out strenuous ideological opposition that does not change based on winning elections. We must be consistent and certain. We are not trusted because we don't stand up for what we espouse, win or lose.

The GOP is imploding. It could fall in on itself.

But not if the left keeps fighting these intramural squabbles.

At every level, find the best Dem you can get on the ticket, vote for them. And keep doing it.

Every minute we spend fighting US, is time in which those who don;t pay attention can become confused enough to think that a GOP candidate might make sense.

And ... the reason we aren't trusted, is because the left ALWAYS appears to be at war with it self. No one can predict what it wants. And politicians see that.

The reason the right wing is getting away with what it does is that the have a LONG view. We on the left don't. It is that simple.

I think we are heading in the wrong direction and that the party is largely captured by corporate interests and subscribes to Voodoo Economics.

That isn't "us" but "them" and I don't work for "them" and don't vote for "them".

I think "us" is going to have to either come together on a direction or there isn't going to be an "us" and if that direction is what you see is what you get then "us" ain't gonna make it.

Dewey, Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and to some extent Nixon, were more moderate on those issues and Obama probably could've dealt with them a lot easier.

The difference is that in Goldwater and Taft's day, they didn't filibuster every single bill that came to the Senate floor.

have manners and did show that they had breeding. They were gentlemen.
The Neocons and Tea Partyers of today are mostly low-life forms, reminiscent
of the gutter -- even though some of them came from well-to-do families.

Money is one thing, upbringing is something else.