In 1988 Michael Jordan was at the height of his athletic abilities but had not yet achieved the elusive goal of an NBA championship. During the 1988-1990 seasons, his nemesis was the Detroit Pistons, otherwise known as the “Bad Boys.” The “Bad Boys” devised a defensive scheme that alternated between double-teaming him, playing him straight up, and forcing him to pass the ball to another player. If those methods were not successful, then they resorted to beating him up physically. In 1991 Jordan and his team were finally able to defeat those tactics and win their first championship in 1991.
Oscar Wilde once said, “Life imitates art, more than art imitates life. “With all due respect, Mr. Wilde, I believe we have an illustrative case where politics are imitating sports. The Republican Party and their conservative brethren have adopted a political strategy that analogically resembles the “Bad Boys” strategy of Detroit. Hence we have “The Obama Rules.”
Rule 1. Do not pass any meaningful legislation proposed by the Obama Administration.
Practically after Barack H. Obama uttered the words “I solemnly swear, “establishment Republicans, right-wing media, and disgruntled right-wing activists conspired, colluded, and circumstantially decided to vehemently oppose everything that the new President proposed to deal with the economic crisis specifically and governance in general. Obstruction was the order of the day regardless of how obfuscatory their opposition to everything President Obama proposed seemed. As reported in the new book written by Robert Draper, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the House of Representatives,” There was a private dinner attended by at least 15 men on the night of the inauguration. Fourteen of these 15 were a mixture of sitting Congressmen, Senators, and two well-known non-legislators. The list reads like a “Who’s Who” in Republican politics.
During the economic crisis, these men came together to plot and layout the blueprint for regaining power. At the end of their four-hour meeting, their pledge (The GOP has a thing for pledges) was, according to Draper, “to show a united and unyielding opposition to the President’s economic policies.” The House executed this plan to perfection when all of its members voted against the economic stimulus bill; the Senate Republicans had a more challenging time preventing defections. A signal of how determined and desperate the Republicans were to do legislatively, what they were unable to do electorally, began to assert themselves publicly. Their “High Priest” of demagoguery and buffoonery, Rush Limbaugh, went on the airwaves to declare that he wanted to “see Obama fail” without a word of opposition from his political minions. This was followed up by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s declaration that the number one priority for Republicans was “to make President Obama a one-term President.”
One of the most telling metrics that exhibit how fervently they adhered to this tactic is that never in the history of the Senate has there been the escalating number of cloture votes required to bring legislation to the floor. Cloture votes are indicative of how many times the minority has threatened filibusters. This trend started in 2006 when the Democrats took over the House, but the number has increased measurably since the Obama administration. According to Brian Beutler of TPM, the 111th Congress Democrats had to file for cloture 136 times. The high for Democrats, while they were in the minority, is 58.
According to Josh Tauber of Govtrack.us, the 111th Congress was the least productive in history in large part due to Senate Republicans intransigence. See below
The Republicans have had great success with this tactic, but at what cost, the cost of the American Dream, “a dream deferred” (Langston Hughes)?
Rule 2. Convince Americans that Obama’s Presidency is Illegitimate.
This rule has been applied ever since Barack Obama won the presidency and has taken on many different faces. The most notorious of these efforts to turn President Obama into an alien has been dubbed the “Birther Movement.” The Birther Movement vehemently claims that President Obama was not born in the United States (most likely in Kenya) and therefore not eligible to be President because he is not a “natural born citizen.” They see President Obama as some type of Manchurian Candidate whose rise to power resulted from the prescient and Machiavellian plans of his Kansan mother, grandparents, and a Kenyan father who knew their young spawn would have the right stuff to become President one day. This belief has been depicted as if it was a fringe movement, but poll results have shown this to be untrue. A CBS poll in 2011 found that 45 percent of Republicans thought that President Obama was born in another country, and 22 percent said they did not know. My question is, how much of this do we attribute to the “fear of a black president,” and how much is due to unmitigated ignorance.
It doesn’t take much of a pivot for this same group to employ their next go-to move, which is to shout from the rooftops that President is a secret Muslim. This is still pretty popular after four years and is a transparent attempt to play on the anti-Islamic sentiments and fears of some Americans. It’s the height of duplicity that many of these same people want to claim that the President’s policies are anti-religion. Yet, they clearly would deny an American that is Muslim from being President of the United States. Their xenophobia runs deeper than that when you consider that they would deny Muslims a place of worship.
Republican officials that attempt to appear reasonable will often be heard saying, “I take the President at his word” wink-wink. The despicable Mitt Romney has employed both tactics freely throughout his campaign, and to the credit of most Americans, they have been rejected. But they don’t stop there. According to them, President Obama didn’t earn his Bachelors from Columbia, his magna cum laude JD from Harvard, or his tenure as President of The Harvard Law Review. This intense level of denial reminds me of something my mother said to all my siblings and me over the years. She said, “In your life, there will be white people that will put obstacles in your way to deny you opportunities, but there is one thing they will have a hard time denying, and that’s if you get their education.” The perverse irony is that while President Obama is highly accomplished academically, some feel compelled to test that maxim concerning President Obama.
Rule 3. Lie Like Your Life Depended Upon It
Mitt Romney and the Republican Party have lied so much during the past four years that they have forced the misguided media to temporarily abandon their slavish devotion to “balance” and usage of false equivalencies and report some of the facts about Romney’s mendacity.
Romney’s first political ad was an early indication of how mired in manure that his campaign would be. Romney and his people took a statement that President Obama attributed to John McCain and edited out any reference to John McCain, making it seem that the statement was Obama’s. Romney’s mom jeans should have been on fire. These bald-faced lies were only a prelude to things to come.
The most critical lie has been how Romney states that if any of his campaign’s claims are untrue or mistakes, they would correct and remove that advertisement or statement. This one is most damning because Romney’s refusal to do this exposes his complicity in the lies and his disdain for the truth. Romney has told lies ranging from (a) President Obama has stripped work requirements from welfare programs to appeal to his “base.” This is a twofer for Romney, a lie wrapped in a racist dog whistle to disavowing almost every right-wing position he has championed for the past two years. It has been excruciatingly painful to watch the media at large enable Romney’s lies and deal with the reality that nearly 50 percent of Americans support this proverbial truth deflector.
A campaign that lies this much should have been disqualified months ago. Still, this campaign continues to be propped up by the endless millions of dollars unleashed on our political system, a feckless medi,a and those Americans that allow their hatred for President Obama to lead them to ignore his accomplishments and support the most dishonest candidate to run for President in modern times. Hopeful,ly for us, President Obama will be just like Jordan. Once Jordan learned how to ,win the Jordan Rules were no longer effective.
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