Ronald Brownstein
National Journal
Thursday, February 24, 2011
As President Obama confronts a resurgent Republican Party, he finds himself fighting a two-front war.
In Washington, Obama is already colliding with a conservative GOP House majority determined to slash spending and regulation. But the president also faces multiplying conflicts with Republican governors. The breadth and intensity of these confrontations dwarfs the level of tension between Bill Clinton and a previous generation of conservative GOP governors in the 1990s. Indeed, it’s difficult to think of another president who faced as much resistance on as many fronts from governors in the opposite party as Obama is encountering today.
This lengthening list of disputes says something about Obama’s agenda, and something about the new Republican governors, many of whom will arrive in Washington this weekend for the National Governors Association annual meeting. Mostly it speaks volumes about the continuing polarization of American politics.
Republican governors came out swinging against many of Obama’s initiatives at the opening bell. Moderates Charlie Crist in Florida and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California supported Obama’s 2009 economic-stimulus package, but almost all of their GOP colleagues lobbied congressional Republicans to oppose it. After the stimulus bill passed, several GOP governors (along with a few Democrats) rejected the increased unemployment aid it offered, arguing that the strings attached would force them to increase state spending.
(More here.)
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