I want you to take a good look at that face, Republicans. This is the face that you have been harassing and obstructing for over five years. The face that has taken on terrorists and dictators and pirates– global crisis and domestic tragedies– with our dignity and integrity fully intact. Now, he’s looking at you!
Don’t let the smiles fool you. This guy means what he says. I’d look away, too. Be very afraid, Republicans. I know you’re having a difficult time trying to negotiate with yourselves, which would indicate that you must first figure out how to walk before you can soar with the eagles. And, being a party to domestic terrorism in trying to crash the global economy just to prevent poor people from getting healthcare and food has its perks, after all. But this time it’s different. Before you start pressing the little red buttons on your suicide vests, stop and think about this. I know you’ve tried everything you could to steal elections, criminalize abortion, and funnel rights and public property for pennies-on-the-dollar to the “job creators.” It’s just too bad for you and the rest of the country that you’ve had your priorities and principles in order to this point, but let me tell you, as recent events have demonstrated, I think this president is through negotiating with terrorists.
I know you’re going through a tough time in your political lives, GOP. It’s a fork in the road that you’re going to have to navigate on your own, but this is not the time to get cute. You’ve lost the fight to repeal The Affordable Care Act, at least 42 times, including a national election. You’ve already given up on the Immigration reform debate, which won’t help you win the “rebranding” campaign anytime soon. You’ve lost your ability to control your drunken kin who are still making obscene and threatening gestures to the rest of the country. What are you gonna do? Disown them? Unlikely. But, after the president stared down Vladimir Putin recently, a far more formidable foe than a hundred of you, and prevailed in a negotiation of war and peace without having to look too deeply into the man’s soul to find his weakness, it seems that Iran is coming around, now, too, and it’s beginning to look like all you have left is beating your wives and kicking your dogs out of frustration.
Sure, you’re getting desperate. Desperate people resort to desperate measures. I know you think that House Speaker John Boehner saying, “it’s time for the president’s party to show the courage to work with us to solve the problem” is your idea of personal responsibility, but it’s not the president’s courage you should be worried about. And, since this strategy only seems to work out for John Boehner and the slow demise of the American middle class, our credit rating, international prestige and leverage in the world– I think it’s time to rethink your incoherent strategy of mutually-assured self-destruction.
Because this is the face of a new American president.