The Chicago Way

From the Wall Street Journal - a real news source

When Barack Obama promised to deliver "a new kind of politics" to Washington, most folk didn't picture Rahm Emanuel with a baseball bat.

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A White House set on kneecapping its opponents isn't, of course, entirely new. (See: Nixon) What is a little novel is the public and bare-knuckle way in which the Obama team is waging these campaigns against the other side.

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What makes these efforts notable is that they are not the lashing out of a frustrated political operation. They are calculated campaigns, designed to create bogeymen, to divide the opposition, to frighten players into compliance. The White House sees a once-in-a-generation opportunity on health care and climate. It is obsessed with winning these near-term battles, and will take no prisoners.

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There's also the little fact that many Americans voted for this president in thrall to his vow to bring the country together. It's hard to do that amid gunfire, and voters might just notice.

Obama's 'Chicago-style politics:' Boehner

Obama's 'Chicago-style politics'

Republicans are accusing the Obama White House of an offensive offensive strategy for its critics -- which lately include FOX News Channel's most vocal commentators.

Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, on the Senate floor, has accused the president of reviving the old "enemies list'' of Nixon days , this from a guy who served the Nixon White House as a young man. Those enemies include the insurance industry.

And now House Republican Leader John Boehner says the White House's attack tactics are nothing short of "Chicago-style politics.''

"The White House and congressional Democrats know that their liberal special-interest agenda is not very popular,'' Boehner (R-Ohio) said at his weekly press briefing today. "And now they are following a familiar pattern: when you can't win an argument based on the facts, launch vicious political attacks.

"This Chicago-style politics is shutting the American people out and demonizing their opponents,'' Boehner asserted.

"They are writing the health care bill in secret, even though the president called for all of this to be out on an open table and have C-SPAN cameras in the room,'' he said. "Instead, Democrats are targeting those who don't fall immediately in line - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, doctors, Fox News. (talk radio, insurance companies, republicans, governors, military generals)

The Administration promised during the campaign that they were going to usher in an era of 'post-partisanship' in here in Washington,'' the House Republican leader said, "but what they are doing is flat-out despicable."