3) Obama is now addressing this part of our national crisis by using both carrots and sticks to either transform or further weaken the Republican Party.
From my notes:
The carrot is the inclusion in the discussion process, the involvement in power, albeit from a position of much lesser strength. The stick is such things as the ploy with Limbaugh, to show them to the American people as the hypocritical bullies that they are. The Republicans have still not decided that they need to accept, rather than fight against, Obama’s power. They are not yet ready to recognize Obama as their president, and not just the most powerful person on the other side.
In order for the Republicans to make that move, they’ve got to be able to get into a place where the idea of our all being in this together, and of their own place in the order of things as being one in which sometimes they get to dominate but sometimes also they have to submit gracefully, for the greater good of the nation.
Just as George W. Bush (or Dick Cheney) could not tolerate anything that limited his power –not the Constitution, not treaties, not the law, not the established custom, not the truth, not the rules of simple human decency—so also the Republicans are expressions of that same spirit, that same rebellious and defiant spirit that bows to nothing, nor willingly subordinates itself to any sort or good order (law, morality, etc.)
It is the spirit of “will not yield” that rules here. The spirit of “there’s nothing more important than me” is part of the same governing group.
America needs for that spirit to get put back into its cage. Only evil comes out of that spirit.
That dark spirit, as much as anything else, is at the core of the national crisis in which we find ourselves.
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