Last night Charles Krauthammer took the outgoing Congressional leadership to task over their legacy of obstructionism.
Watch:
Via the Daily Caller (emphasis mine):
”It sounds like Schumer is saying that, for the first time in living memory, we’re going to have amendments introduced in the U.S. Senate, which is a remarkable constitutional achievement and it’s because Harry Reid is gone. The grown-ups are now in control of the Congress. This idea that we should be using American oil in America is so idiotic, it’s almost unworthy of talking about. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to use the Canadian oil and if we export it, which we will because we have a surplus, we’re going to substitute gallon by gallon American oil, it makes no sense at all.”“Look, I think what’s really important here is that Republicans are going to have a chance to show how retroactively for the last six years everything has stopped in the Senate. Democrats stopped it, Harry Reid stopped it and they effectively acted as a shield to make Obama look as if he wasn’t the one stopping stuff. Well now he’s going to be exposed because he’s going to have to exercise the veto. Schumer and the others could prevent a few of the bills from landing on the president’s desk with these ridiculous amendments on Keystone, for example. But I think it will expose them. But the days of hiding under Harry Reid’s desk are over.”
This is important, and it’s not a point that should be ignored by conservatives. Starting today, we’ll be holding accountable not just a newly-minted leadership, but a President who now finds himself in the minority after six comfortable years of playing pen-and-phone politics.
This will not be a perfect session for Republicans. Having a majority doesn’t necessarily translate into getting everything you want all the time; we still have a President who will oppose conservative legislation, and a caucus full of Democrats who, after six years in power, know the rules and how to manipulate them. But as Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress, it’s time for conservatives to do as much as we can to take control of the spin cycle and protect the ball.
I’m not saying we should treat the new Congress with kid gloves, but as the new session begins, we should take time to remember how we felt during the last week of October, when we were running on no sleep while campaigning for new candidates we claimed to believe in. Democrats will be playing defense for the next two years as bill after bill lands on Obama’s desk, and it’s our job to make this as miserable a time for them as possible.
This is not the moment to waste time eating our own. It’s time to pile on the Obamas and Reids of the world who made progress next to impossible, then turned around and blamed Republicans for the terrible policies that did manage to make it into law.
We didn’t stumble upon this majority; we earned it. Let’s make the most of it.
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