Will Winning the Nobel Peace Prize Help Or Hurt Obama and Political Conditions in the United States?
At this point, Republicans reflexively oppose every single policy Democrats embrace. The GOP has even decided to reject ideas they originally came up with. They’re running a scorched earth campaign … and Chip Reid thinks an unsolicited Nobel Peace Prize will make it “even more difficult” for the parties to find common ground?
Making it worse? How can it be worse?
If anything this can only make things better.
As Steve says, with current conditions there is no way to make matters worse, at least with respect to Republicans in Congress, as well as Republicans in leadership positions, talk radio, and Fox.
Fortunately these are not the only Republicans. When Obama strives for bipartisanship, he is looking beyond these people and considering all the people who have voted Republican in recent years. This includes both those who crossed over and voted for him, and Republican voters who voted against him but are open to supporting his positions based on the merit.
There are Republican voters who do like Obama. While I have no numbers on this nation wide, I do know people who voted against him but believe he is doing a good job. It probably does help when Obama points out that he is considering Republican ideas, such as on health care reform, even if he does not pick up any Republican votes outside of the state of Maine. Winning the Nobel Peace Prize is also likely to improve how such people see him.
This may or may not help much, but I cannot see any way that it can hurt.
Sure, talk radio will attack him over this, but things couldn’t get any worse here. Even this might help us if it helps demonstrate to rational people just how nutty the right wing noise machine and conservative movement is. This will show that, while liberals criticized Bush over real matters of policy, the fanatics of the right simply hate him. Besides hating him as a person, they hate the American values he represents, and the conservative movement which would oppose such a man under any circumstances will never tolerate the thought of having a black man in the White House.
No matter how his presidency develops or the planet evolves, he has already confirmed his place of greatness. For he didn’t just write “The Audacity of Hope,” he actualized it on the campaign trail of 2008. We spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to win over hearts-and-minds to the American Way. President Obama has done the same service on the cheap.
Many will appreciate this accomplishment world wide, perhaps including some Americans who have voted Republican.
Posted in Barack Obama, Republicans, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan. Tags: Dan Rather, Democrats, Fox, Health Care, Health Care Reform, John Kerry, Liberals, Republicans, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Torture, Watergate. RSS feed for comments on this post.. TrackBack URL.
The Prize to a sitting American president is good for America. That has to be really difficult for Limbaugh, Beck, and the other spew-hate-for-pay pundits. It must be excruciating for them to see America’s stock rise Obama’s watch.