On June 3, 2012, MediaMatters.org reports that
Congressional experts Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute appeared on MSNBC’s Up w/ Chris Hayes this morning to detail the Republican Party’s “all-out war” against President Obama. They explained how the GOP has “been aggressively oppositional in every respect” and how it has succeeded in using parliamentary tools “to deny the majority an opportunity to act.”
Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele objected, arguing that President Obama and the Democratic Party deserve just as much blame for the current political gridlock as Republicans.
This notion that it’s Obama and the Democrats who refuse to compromise on policy issues is absurd, but it is an oft-repeated claim that media outlets and conservatives fling out to deflect from, and obscure, Republican obstructionism. Indeed, as Ornstein and Mann pointed out, the fault lies entirely with the Republicans.
As Mann explained, Republicans “are the ones that have become much more committed to all-out opposition.”
