At his Washington Post opinion blog, Eugene Robinson praises President Obama for issuing hostile congressional Republicans a challenge on Thursday instead of inviting them to sit around the campfire and sing "Kumbaya."
Perhaps the most significant line in Obama's speech was his promise to take his jobs message to the people in "every corner of the country." He told the assembled members of Congress that if they balk at passing his American Jobs Act, he will go over their heads. That answered the obvious question: What does Obama intend to do when House Republicans ball up his bill and throw it in the trash?
The measures Obama proposed are eminently reasonable. Who could argue with repairing the nation’s infrastructure, modernizing our children's schools or providing jobs for brave returning veterans? The program is full of tons of GOP-friendly tax cuts, and it will be entertaining to watch Republicans twist themselves into pretzels to reject so many of their own ideas. But reject them they surely will. The party's campaign message for 2012 is that Obama is always wrong about everything. At this point, does anyone expect John Boehner and Mitch McConnell to say, "Great ideas, Mr. President, we'll get all this stuff right through."
Read Eugene Robinson's entire blog entry at the Washington Post.