President Obama is finally out there, swinging. Although most of his speech earlier today addressed the expansive theme of economic inequality, he finished on an aggressive note, aimed sharply at you-know-who: "You owe it to the American people to tell us what you are for, not just what you're against.”
While Obama's partisan attack came attached to his larger theme as a mere rider--indeed, almost as an afterthought--the attack looms larger in political importance.
As The Hill notes, and as virtually all reporting on Obama's fresh offense will note, "Almost every one of the proposals the president outlined had been mentioned before, including during his inaugural and State of the Union addresses earlier this year."
Assigning partisan blame, then, for Washington's blind inaction--and demanding accountability from those who enforce inaction--had become Obama's essential task in splitting the "both sides" narrative so prominent in the public mind (which Republicans rely on, to safely evade responsibility).
Now the essential task is to keep the pressure on, to repeatedly review the GOP's deliberate inertia, to insist every day that congressional Republicans owe it to voters to itemize precisely what they're for, and how they'd achieve it.
It should be amusing to watch their empty-headed gazes frown into the cameras.
The punditry will shrug this pugnacious talk off with variations on "Obama is blaming the GOP for his own failure to lead" and "he's just trying to take the attention off the failure of Obamacare and/or his entire presidency."
Just give it a day or two. A couple Politico articles and some wisdom from Ron Fournier and Mark Halperin are in the works. They're coming.
Posted by: Turgidson | December 04, 2013 at 07:08 PM