President Tantrum: Eat My Peas and Do My Homework

President Tantrum: Eat My Peas and Do My Homework
By John Ransom
10/7/2011

The Republicans are trying to get a vote on the Senate floor for the exact jobs bill that Obama has been puffing up his chest about for the last three weeks.

You know? The jobs bill that he recruited sixth-graders to write to Congress about as he kicked off the It’s All Your Fault reelection tour against a "do nothing" Congress?

President Truman? No. President Tantrum.

"For those of you who did skip class today, I've got a homework assignment for you," Obama told a crowd of kids in North Carolina early in September after the jobs bill was announced but before it was fully presented to Congress, "tell your Congress person that the time for gridlock and games is over; the time for action is now…. You can write a letter. When was the last time you did that?"

Very innovative strategy from the Obama administration: getting sixth-graders to write lobbying letters to Congress about a bill that hadn’t even made it through the inboxes in Congress. “Did you pass it yet? Did you pass it yet? Did you pass it yet? Did you pass it yet?”

Now in a reprise of Obama’s Eat-My-Peas moment from the courageous debt ceiling debate that rallied his base- when afterwards the president hid behind his nine irons and his daughters’ homework on Martha’s Vineyard- the president yesterday issued more threats to me, you and your elected representatives.

Hey. It worked out well for him last time.

Maybe this is a sign he’s running his reelection campaign solely on solar now.

"The question, then, is, will Congress do something?" the president said at a press conference. "If Congress does something, then I can't run against a do-nothing Congress. If Congress does nothing, then it's not a matter of me running against them. I think the American people will run them out of town, because they are frustrated."

To make that clear: If Congress does something then he can’t do something. If Congress does nothing, then he also can’t do something. But the American people will do something.

Yep.

Psst, White House Staffers: All work and no play makes Obama a dull boy.

As an exercise in logic, I suppose Obama understands what he said when he promised to do nothing no matter what Congress chooses to do.

But as an exercise in rhetoric, I have two points: 1) Huh? 2) Teleprompter broken again?

The only problem with the presumed point buried in Obama’s tortured syntax is that Democrats in the Senate don’t want to vote on the jobs bill that Obama has presented.

But the GOP does. Very much.

Senate Democrat muckety-muck Harry Reid has been doing contortions trying to stop the bill from coming before the Senate. If it comes in undiluted form, just as Obama presented, the online news hawks from The Hill predict a major embarrassment for the president.

“The package, which does not include modifications unveiled Wednesday by the Senate Democratic leadership,” writes The Hill’s Alexander Bolton, “might not get a single vote, if history is a guide.”

“Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) executed a similar maneuver earlier this year when he forced a vote on Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget blueprint. It failed on a vote of 97-0.”

Doh!-for-97. Not often you see a president strikeout swinging on 97 straight pitches.

The jobs plan will likely fall to the same objections that Democrats had against his budget. Both contained provisions to raise taxes. Americans just don’t like taxes to be raised and Democrats wisely don’t want to go into an election year with tax increases as the only bragging point on their franked mail.

“We raised taxes! Yes we can! It killed jobs, but so did our last jobs plan!”

So the Democrats have re-written the jobs bill- doing the negotiating job that Obama should have done with Congress in the first place. The new bill is being touted by Democrats as the “real” Obama jobs bill.

They’ve hoped we’d forgotten about the Rose Garden ceremony when Obama first presented the bill Democrats don’t want to vote for.

The president then rolled out his newest, best innovation yet as the conference wound down.

He gave the media “a little homework assignment” too, just like he gave the students in North Carolina. Hurray!

That’s it, dude. Keep treating the media like you do the little kids. It worked in 2008.

“Go ask Republicans what their jobs plan is," taunted Obama according to CBS News.

They don’t have to ask. They’ll see it as it passes Congress on the way to the president’s desk.

And you can count this as the last time that Congress will do Obama’s homework for him and the last time they’ll eat his peas.

Tantrum or no.
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To read another article by John Ransom, click here.