NEOAVATARA

The shiny casket above? Symobolic of Mr. Obama's Post Partisan Presidency

Let it be said who put the final nail in the coffin of the ‘post-partisan’ presidency: Barack H. Obama.

In what must be considered a stunning move, the White House asked Congressional Democrats to consider using a budgetary parliamentary tactic, reconciliation, in the Senate in order to avoid a Republican filibuster over his health care policy initiatives.  While some Democratic senators were reluctant to embrace the arrangement, Mr. Obama made clear at a White House session on Thursday afternoon that he favored it, people with knowledge of the session said.  The tentative agreement would also apply reconciliation rules to a less-partisan fight over student lending, but does not include filibuster protection for energy or climate-change legislation.

This would be an unprecedented partisan move.  When Republican even considered the nuclear option (removing filibuster powers) on Bush court appointees, Democrats were up in arms about the partisan and unfair attempts.  And that was just the suggestion.  Mr. Obama appears to now be putting it into practice.

There are some reasonable Senate Democrats left.  But they are in the minority. Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said Friday that he would prefer not to pursue health legislation through the reconciliation process.  “I think it gets in the way,” Mr. Baucus said, explaining that his goal was to produce a health care bill that could “get significantly more than 60 votes.”  “If we jam something down somebody’s throat, it’s not sustainable,” he said.

“Virtually everyone who has been part of these discussions recognizes that reconciliation is not the preferred way to write this legislation,” said Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “But the administration wants to have a reconciliation instruction as an insurance policy.”  Mr. Conrad said the decision not to invoke the no-filibuster rule until mid-October was intended “as a signal that people are very serious and want this to work through the normal give-and-take.”

No, that is not what this is.  This is an ultimatum.  Can you imagine how Democrats would have screamed blood murder if President Bush had given a similar ultimatum on his court appointees?  There would have been an open revolt.

The media is also culpable.  They made the Republicans to be evil power hungry partisans when the court nominee issue came out.  Now, when Mr. Obama suggests something analogous, the media appears to be silent.

Want an example?  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the nuclear option in 2005:

“The nuclear option was only one of the things that Republicans in power at that time did or tried to do to ruin our country,” Reid said. “The nuclear option was the most important issue I’d ever worked on in my entire career because if that had gone forward, it would have destroyed the Senate as we know it.”

“It would mean that one man, sitting in the White House, has the practical ability to personally hand out lifetime jobs to judges whose rulings can last forever.”

“That’s not how America works.”

Here is the real kicker:  No less an expert that then Senator Barack Obama openly opposed the maneuver, stating it would cause ‘Civil War’ in the Senate.  The hypocrisy is staggering.  And let us remember on simple fact:  the nuclear options was never used by Republicans.  The famous gang of 14, led by John McCain, averted the crisis.

So let there be no further nonsense about Barack Obama being a post partisan President.  Mr. Obama is using power tactics that he possibly picked up from his new buddy Hugo Chavez.  His policy:  simply, the end justifies the means, damn bipartisanship.  He may, in fact, be the most partisan President in American history…or at least in recent history.  And yes, that includes George W. Bush.  The media is ignoring this ‘little’ fact, rather talking about Obama’s ‘hipness‘ or superpowers; but the truth is there for all to see.  In a process that may dictate how our government controls one-sixth of the U.S. economy, Mr. Obama doesn’t feel the normal parliamentary rules should apply.  That, more than any other single action of his presidency, shows what kind of man, and leader, he is.