There exists only one ironclad measurement of Republican cynicism: the volume in which Republicans deny it.
Today, Charles Krauthammer executes a beautiful, triple-axel job of proving the premise:
[1]Obama’s political style: the professorial, almost therapeutic, invitation to civil discourse, wrapped around the basest of rhetorical devices — charges of malice compounded with accusations of bad faith....
[2]The other side plays "politics," Obama acts in the public interest. Their eyes are on poll numbers, political power, the next election; Obama’s rest fixedly on the little children....
[3]This impugning of motives is an Obama constant. "They" play politics with deficit reduction, with government shutdowns, with health care. And now immigration. It is ironic that such a charge should be made in a speech that is nothing but politics.
Let's take Krauthammer's hysterics one by one.
1) If Obama is known for any political style, it is that of his professiorial approach, a genuine invitation to conservative opponents to Come and reason together. It's also an approach that has driven activist progressives -- far more than his conservative opponents -- to rabid distraction, since they believe Obama is immensely naive in pursuing this line of governance. Rather than naivete, though, it's just Obama's way, which is indeed somewhat professorially abstract: it is his intensely focused pursuit of an ultimate objective, however far away or unrealistic it may be today, and may still be tomorrow. Yet it is, indisputably and empirically, a part of who Obama is.
To hackjob, partisan hostiles such as Krauthammner, however, Obama's genuine pursuit of civilized discourse must be converted to an object of ridicule, since the very right-wing "malice" that Obama must on occasion spotlight -- as that to be avoided -- lies so immutably within Krauthammer's wretched little heart. As the saying goes, the truth, to those who prefer its suppression, hurts like hell.
2) For Obama -- or for that matter anyone not of the pseudoconservative persuasion -- to close his eyes to the fact that their eyes are only on "the next election" would require that he openly dispute those pseudoconservatives who openly, proudly proclaim that their eyes are only on the next election: that "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president," which, by the way, I heard Mitch repeat last night on "PBS Newshour."
Is it really up to Obama to insist that they don't really mean it?
3) Krauthammer seems to want to rebut the charge that Republicans "play politics with deficit reduction, with government shutdowns, with health care. And now immigration." Yet even Krauthammer can't quite bring himself to hallucinate that severely, and that's because Republicans' only modus operandi since early 2009 has been to play malicious politics with deficit reduction, government shutdowns, health care and immigration.
Prithee, what else have Republicans done? Let's see, they've introduced the malicious concept of "death panels" and have maliciously distorted the fundamental premises of the Affordable Care Act. They've reintroduced malicious, homophobic garbage about gays in the military. They've introduced a maliciously counterproductive insistence on less spending during a recession, as well as maliciously deny that Obama's stiumulus spending has alleviated the pain of unemployment. They maliciously brought us to the edge of one government shutdown and are, already, maliciously doing it again. They've maliciously stirred ethnic hatred against Hispanics. They've fostered and spread malicious rumors about Obama's birth, Obama's childhood, Obama's education, Obama's religion, Obama's Americanism, Obama's ... fill in the bloody blank.
From start to longed-for finish, the Republican record since 2009 has been an unbroken one of nothing but cynicism and politics -- the latter of which simply breaks Charles Krauthammer's heart, when he sees Obama practicing it.
It really is quite stunning -- their yelps of protest. Their yelps.