At the Univision forum yesterday, President Obama said his “biggest failure” as president was failing to pass immigration reform. Not only was this news to everyone — last we heard, his biggest mistake was focusing too much on policy and not enough on telling stories — but he wouldn’t even take responsibility for the lack of progress. The real culprits? Obstructionist Republicans and distracting economic problems. According to Obama, his only real error — if you could call it that — was being too “naive” about the whole situation:
“My biggest failure so far is we haven’t gotten comprehensive immigration reform done,” Obama said. “But it’s not because for lack of trying or desire, and I’m confident we are going to accomplish that.” …
The president faced tough questions on why he hadn’t accomplished comprehensive immigration reform, an important issue for Hispanic voters. Jorge Ramos, one of the moderators for Univision, put it bluntly: “You promised that and a promise is a promise and with all due respect, you didn’t keep that promise.”
Obama said on Univision that he accepted responsibility but that he faced an economy “on the verge of collapse” in his first year and blamed Republicans for abandoning support for comprehensive immigration reform.
“What I confess I did not expect, and so I’m happy to take responsibility for being naive here, is that Republicans who had previously supported comprehensive immigration reform, my opponent in 2008 who had been a champion of it and who attended these meetings, suddenly would walk away,” he said. “That’s what I did not anticipate.”
This is completely delusional. If Obama was so tied up with economic issues his first year in office, why did he spend the majority of that time focused on his health care reform bill? The idea that Republicans have been blocking his attempts at immigration reform is also absurd. When did Obama do anything during his first three years — outside of giving occasional speeches — that moved the ball forward on immigration, or showed that he had any serious interest in tackling it? When confronted by Hispanic leaders, Obama would blame Republicans and insist that he couldn’t just issue an executive order on immigration. Then, as soon as the GOP started moving forward on its own immigration reform plan, he suddenly flip-flopped and took executive action.
Republicans haven’t refused to work with Obama on immigration. There’s no indication Obama even tried to reach out to them on the issue. In fact, he’s done just the opposite. The White House made every effort to kill Marco Rubio’s DREAM Act proposal, and eventually succeeded once Obama issued his immigration executive order — a temporary bandaid that’s no substitute for real reform.
Your cat claws are out in force today (I mean that in a postive way).!
This will be the challenge for Romney in the debates; BHO is a gifted teller of fiction and "fact checkers" are compliant.
If the Univision reporter was a little smarter, he would have added "and your party controlled both houses of congress for two years, so Republicans can't be to blame. After all, you rammed health care through without a single vote by them." n n
This is exactly right. The democrats controlled both house of Congress, and the presidency. Yet, Mr. Obama blames republicans. The media, and the public, need to hold the president accountable and responsible for his failures. That they don't do that is a disservice to the public and to the voters who look to the news media for reliable information about the election.
I am going to be cynical here BDZ, I wonder if the Univision reporter knew that and intentionally didn't ask it. Presume media bias, presume Univision prefers Obama to Romney, this is the ideal question because it gives him the opportunity to bash Republicans while spinning what is clearly a failure to keep his promise into a powerful grievance that he can exploit as a wedge issue. n nIt is classic psychological warfare, excellently done, and he has painted the Republicans into a corner where they can't effectively respond because if they respond in Spanish they will legitimize bilingualism — and if they don't, this audience will never hear their message. We are creating the mess Canada has with Quebec, and we are *creating* it, not inheriting it like Canada did. n nAnyone remember Genesis 11:6 and the not-so-little "Tower of Babel"? n nAt the risk of being sacrilegious, there is a flip side to that story — Tito in Yugoslavia comes to mind — a nation that lacks a common culture and a common language can only be held together by a tyrannical dictator. A democracy can not function if its people can not discuss things in a common language.
nEverything about Obama and his Obama Zombies has been delusional.
There's decades of legitimate(LOL) blame to go around. The citizenry is the biggest culprit.
Shurely, your not suggesting the concept of personal responsibility, as this is an anathema to Obama and his party. However your points are well taken.
Rashirey, he is suggesting that, and please don't call him Shirley.
Didn't President Obama for 2 years have a house majority and 59 or 60 votes in the Senate?
Obama's utterances are, as usual, nothing more than self serving blather served up ad hoc. This supercilious creep says whatever he needs to say, when he needs to say it, tailored to the audience at hand.
Voltaire: "Each individual has a God-given right to the individuals own life, liberty & property." nRusseau & French Revolution: "Liberty, Fraternity & Equity." n nI am way oversimplifying things to make a point, and it is the Democrats who are into the "Liberty, Fraternity & Equity" — the rights of groups and the rights of the collective. n nIt is the Republicans who are into the message of the individual and the individual's rights. nThe GOP is the party of the individual, race/gender/color/religion blind individualism. nThe individual, the individual family, the individual community of faith — the individual free to seek happiness & success in whatever way he/she/it desires, and individuals, qua individuals, evaluated on their individual merits and their individual character. n nI support Congressman Alan West because of who he is – as an individual. When I go to a political rally, I go as an individual, and I am amongst other individuals. Go to a Democratic Party event and you will think you are on the deck of an Aircraft Carrier — everyone is wearing their union T-shirt and they all sit together so there is the block of purple, block of yellow, etc. It's a collective. n nThe GOP thus gets into a no-win situation when it attempts to fight the Democrats using the Democrat's own rulebook because as it attempts to adopt "women's issues" and "minority issues" and all the rest, it has to abandon its strengths in individualsm and try to be more of a DNC than the DNC itself, which it isn't going to be able to do. n nWorse, in doing that, it abandons (and infuriates) its own base and winds up loosing THEM.
Lilly ledbetter. Economic issue for working women and their families nStimulus bill: Economic issue for the country took us from losing 800,000 jobs n a month to gaining over 200,000 jobs a month. nStock market: Economic issue. Doubled since the stimulus bill was enacted. nHealtcare Economic issue. #1 cause of bankruptcy before Obamacare.
The President is not the King. Like Bush before he can't pass immigration reform without nenough help from Congress. Then what exactly do you mean by immigration reform. nReagan granted amnesty to illegals. Do you agree or disagree with Reagan's decision.