1. The opposing party's opposing the ruling party is a natural process of government. It's the normal state of things. Your saying that it was "poor behavior" implies that it was an anomaly, that the Republicans did something wrong by not supporting everything Obama wanted to do, and that the minority party is supposed to accede to every demand of the ruling party, which would be absurd.
2. The Democrats only controlled Congress for 2 of Obama's 8 years. You imply that, even when Congress is not controlled by the President's own party, that Congress should accede to his demands. This is absurd. It's not how our government works, it's not how it's ever worked, and it's not how it was intended to work--indeed, exactly the opposite is the case.
3. If your implications were true, you should be criticizing the Democrats for doing exactly the same thing right now with far more vehemence.
4. The ostensibly "grassroots supporters" of the current opposition is actually ruthless. Were there violent riots in the streets of cities across the country when Obama was elected?
Well, they said they didn't want a factional system, then they built rules which guaranteed two factions, modelled directly after rules which had done the same elsewhere, and all while organizing themselves into two factions which were visible in nascent form in the first national elections under the Constitution and well solidified by the time Washington was to be replaced as President.
So, do you listen to their words, or their actions? The founders were, to all evidence, a lot like politicians of today, publicly cursing the ills of partisanship while deeply engaged in it, mostly as a rhetorical device against the other party.
Of course, the math says that with the current voting system, any third party that emerges as a major force will always consume one of the existing major parties, leading the nation back to a two party system. I wonder why people always ignore this inconvenient theorem.
1. The opposing party's opposing the ruling party is a natural process of government. It's the normal state of things. Your saying that it was "poor behavior" implies that it was an anomaly, that the Republicans did something wrong by not supporting everything Obama wanted to do, and that the minority party is supposed to accede to every demand of the ruling party, which would be absurd.
2. The Democrats only controlled Congress for 2 of Obama's 8 years. You imply that, even when Congress is not controlled by the President's own party, that Congress should accede to his demands. This is absurd. It's not how our government works, it's not how it's ever worked, and it's not how it was intended to work--indeed, exactly the opposite is the case.
3. If your implications were true, you should be criticizing the Democrats for doing exactly the same thing right now with far more vehemence.
4. The ostensibly "grassroots supporters" of the current opposition is actually ruthless. Were there violent riots in the streets of cities across the country when Obama was elected?