Ms. Parker's column in the Washington Post today is worth a glance, if only because it offers a window into the establishment Republican mind post-November.
Entitled The Double-Down President, it portrays Barack Obama as a power-drunk despot laughingly dismissing the many oh-so-reasonable proposals put forth by the sober and balanced Mr. Boehner, saying, in essence, "My way or the cliff way."
After so many years of partisan intransigence, it’s easy enough to assume that all parties are equally guilty, but this time Obama is driving the herd. Elections have consequences, as the president keeps reminding us. By this, he apparently means that he will have things his way, the rest of the country be damned.
The rest of the country. Ah, yes. Who would have thought Mr. Obama would callously ignore the realities of a 120,163,605-to-1 popular vote thrashing and insist that his approach to fiscal matters was actually supported by others? The audacity!
Why, why does he ignore the perfectly reasonable proposals of the perfectly reasonable Republicans? Is he awash in the hubris of victory? Is he vengeful?
No, he's just a callous, uncompromising bully. Always has been.
Contrary to his campaign rhetoric, the president is not a conciliator but an instigator who habitually doubles down. He may not be a socialist, an accusation he swats away with a bored chuckle...
The portrait of the president is unassailable to anyone who's followed relations between him and the GOP since 2009. The way he insisted on a single-payer system for his health care reforms, the scorched earth tactics he used to dump the Bush tax rates two years ago, that all-spend, no-tax-break stimulus plan. No wonder people keep putting Hitler mustaches on his picture.
To be honest, you will learn nothing useful or substantive by reading Parker's column, or any of her previous ones. As one commenter put it, "She's the Post's Maureen Dowd," a daft, flighty buzzer in an endless, random search for a point.
Still, today's outing is pretty funny. If you're a fan of "NOT!" humor.