Sure, sure, the top ten quotes of this day will come from President Obama. However, it’s important to note what Erick Erickson, the most influential conservative blogger in the country, said today.
In a must-read post, Erickson calls himself part of the “loyal opposition,” and tells conservatives to stop being “professional victims dialed up to 10 on the outrage meter.”
Wow.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Chait argues that Obama’s second term will be defined more by “what the Republicans in Congress decide to do” than by Obama himself:
We like our presidential dramas. We want the Obama era to revolve around Obama and produce a character narrative that will eventually produce grist for 800-page tomes that will be Father’s Day gifts decades into the future. Obama has done his job extremely well, by my reckoning. But that is all he is — the head of one, equal branch of government, a man we have hired to do a job. Our need to elevate him into a monarchial figure not only causes us to persistently misunderstand the world around us, but is also detrimental to the habits of self-government.
If Chait is correct, this quote from Senator John McCain does not bode well: “It was a fine speech, but I didn’t hear any conciliatory remarks. I didn’t see any specific reference like, ‘I reach out my hand to the other side of the aisle.'”
