Publius

Over the past several months, the same independent voters who swept Barack Obama into office have been increasingly turning away from him. The tide of opposition has risen to the point that Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown to fill a seat held by liberal Kennedy's for over 50 years -- based on Brown's platform of stopping the Obama agenda. Obama was elected because he told voters that he was a new kind of politician; that he would reach across the aisle and work with both Democrats and Republicans; that he would negotiate a health care bill in public on CSPAN; that he wouldn't raise taxes on the middle class "by one dime"; that lobbyists for special interests would be exposed and have no say in his administration. And, that he wasn't George Bush. But Obama is exactly the same kind of politician; he has helped lock Republicans out of every step of the process in every one of his major initiatives, his lip service about a "health care summit...

In 2005, MoveOn.org and many other leftists vigorously opposed the use of a procedural gimmick by Republicans then in control of the Senate, to approve one of Bush's judicial nominations. As reported here in 2005: MoveOn.org says of the "nuclear option": Their plan is to throw out 200 years of checks and balances in the Senate, by silencing the minority party for the first time in American history. It's a maneuver so outrageous that even Republicans call it the "nuclear option." It will take 51 senators to defeat them, and the vote is probably less than a month away. If Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist can twist enough arms to get 51 votes in support of Cheney's ruling, the minority party will be completely silenced for the first time ever. Note the key claim: "the minority party will be completely silenced for the first time ever." In 2005, when they opposed what the Senate was acting on, MoveOn.org cherished the time-honored filibuster, as g...