Last January President Obama attended the annual House Republican Retreat. Every year Republican House Representatives get together to discuss their agenda, policies and to get out of Washington D.C. for a weekend. They met in Baltimore, MD and for the first time in history the President of the United States attended. earlier this year President Obama said he would attend both the Democrat and Republican House retreats. When the White House initially tried to get the event televised, they were told “no” by the republicans. After some back door debate the republicans agreed to televise the question and answer period with the President. This was a direct product of the liberal politics that have been missing from the presidency during the Bush administration.
The president did not miss a beat during almost 90 minutes of republicans questioning his policies. He was confronted with a plethora of conservative talking points dealing with health care, economic reform, government transparency and bi-partisanship. This was liberal politics at it’s best; the president stood there and let the republicans make their sound bites and whenever they decided to finish their “question”, he met them with actual facts and rational thought. He explained the reasons for his proposed policies and claimed that if anyone had a better idea to accomplish the same goal, he was more than willing to listen. The problem that most of the representatives ran into were that their claims did not hold any water. One republican claimed that he proposed a health care plan that would cover twice as many American’s then the President’s plan and it would no cost the government a penny. President Obama confidently responded to the representative by asking if there was a way to cover millions of Americans with health insurance that didn’t cost anything, don’t you think he would do that? He explained to the audience that claiming you have such a plan might win you an election, but it’s not true. He also asked the representative to show him his math.
The liberal politics of this administration is a breath of fresh air. If you oppose the President’s policies that’s fine, but back up your opposition witch facts and reasoning. Our country has been deprived of good liberal politics for the last decade and it is great to have this transparency back. There is still more to be done, but many believe that President Obama has made great progress in bringing liberal politics back and dismissing conservative politics as usual. Right now the republican party has a major problem. There is a very popular democratic president in office and they are the minority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Their conservative politics are not doing them any good and they need a new game plan immediately. Saying no to every policy President Obama has put forward has not helped them much in the poll numbers and the 2010 midterm elections are quickly approaching. Maybe they should try working with the democrats on some good legislation, so they can say they accomplished one positive thing in the last 20 years.