Curl: Obama Isn't Even Interested in Compromise

Joseph Curl picks out more evidence that President Obama is not going to even look for anything like common ground with Republicans. It’s his way or no way.

Sen. John Barrasso on Sunday gave a stunning insight into the White House meeting Mr. Obama had Friday with congressional leaders. In an interview on Fox News, the Wyoming Republican said Mr. Obama insisted his policies were on the ballot, but now that voters have spoken, he’s ignoring the message — and he didn’t care a whit what Republicans had to say.

“We went to the White House to say, ‘Mr. President, we want to work with you on the issues of jobs, the economy, affordable energy, health care.’ I was astonished [that] during that whole lunch, the president didn’t ask anything about that at all. He just was so focused on this executive amnesty issue that he ignored the idea of having a dialogue on ways we could actually change the direction of the country and move forward with regard to jobs and the economy,” Mr. Barrasso said.

Some of that is Obama’s narcissism and ego at work, along with his disregard for the voters and the Constitution, but surely some of it is just delusion. The voters repudiated Obama so soundly this mid-term that they left no uncertainty about it. Democrats lost in a remarkably thorough and resounding way. They failed spectacularly to defeat popular Republicans like Greg Abbott in Texas, and even failed to beat relatively unpopular ones like Rick Scott in Florida. Democrats have simply fallen apart at the state level. The surest way to beat a Democrats has been to tie them to Barack Obama and his policies. Barack Obama really has presided over the gutting of his own party.

Yet there’s Obama ignoring all issues save the one he wants to talk about, and making demands of the Republicans in Congress, when he isn’t pretending that they aren’t elected by the voters too.

Since the mid-term election, Obama is already gearing up to pick two fights, one over the immigration executive order, and another over net neutrality. Both are power grabs, and intended to be provocations to Congress. He is daring them to stop him.

I predicted that he would behave this way, yet it’s still astonishing to actually see it. Barack Obama thinks that he is the government unto himself, and the rest is just window dressing.