Just a little rant

I’m tired of hearing people say that Obama is a divisive leader. Obama is not divisive. We leftists have been astounded at his willingness to work with the just-say-no-Republicans. No matter what he proposes Republicans will never support it. For instance, the health-insurance reform package was pretty much the same as (R)Bennet's Healthy Americans Act. It's also the same policy that Republican front-runner (R)Romney instituted in Massachusetts. It's bipartisan legislation, but, just because Obama proposed it, suddenly it's SOCIALISM. Obama and the Democrats caved to tons of Republican proposals to try to attract their votes during the health-insurance reform debates. We leftists lost key provisions like a public option, but not a single Republican will broke ranks to vote for the bipartisan legislation. That's divisiveness, but it's divisiveness manufactured by Republicans.

Then, Republicans decide to start playing political brinkmanship with the nation's credit rating and refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Under Bush, Boehner, McConnell, and Cantor voted to raise the debt ceiling every time--5 times. They didn't have a problem with it back then. But under Obama, it's suddenly OK to put the entire nation’s finances into trouble. And thanks to them the nation’s credit got downgraded for the first time in history. S&P released the following statement regarding their decision to downgrade:

"The political brinkmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy."

Republicans used the debt ceiling to hold the entire nation hostage. And not surprisingly, the nation bore some trauma as a result of their rough-handling.

Obama is trying to work with a Republican party whose "single most important goal," according to Minority Leader McConnel, is to make sure he doesn't get reelected. Notably their most important goal is not to make life better for Americans, because they don't really care what the consequences are of their stubborn refusal to work together to solve problems. There is divisiveness in this country, but it's not Obama's divisiveness. Unless you consider it divisive that an eloquent black man got elected as President and then tried to improve things.