But He Hit Me Back!

The other day, I walked up to an acquaintance of mine and punched him in the face.  Then I had my two friends hold him down while I ate his lunch.  And this guy, he had the temerity to threaten to hit us if we kept messing with him.  The nerve!  How does he expect us to all get along and be friends if he's going to insist upon being hostile to everyone who punches him in the face?  He really needs to learn that if he wants us all to be friends, he needs to stop threatening us and do exactly what we tell him to do.  Otherwise, he's just asking for trouble and the chance of friendship is zip.

And that reminds me of this article I just read:

Senator Lamar Alexander told Reuters he sees the Obama White House adopting an attitude similar to that of the Richard Nixon White House four decades ago, that "everybody is against us and we are going to get them."
[....]
"I'm suggesting to the president that he back up and start over," said Alexander, a member of the Senate Republican leadership. "Don't start an enemies list."

"We want to work with you," Alexander said.
[....]
But as a senior Republican aide put it, "This is going to tick them off. But they have to realize, you can't behave like this and expect bipartisan cooperation."

Oh, and another time when you can't expect bipartisan cooperation?  When your opponents insist that it's to their advantage to deny you bipartisan cooperation and attack everything you do.  But hey, Obama's decided to make enemies with people who proudly announce that they're his enemies, and this makes him as bad as Nixon.  And yes, the worst thing Nixon did was to publicly criticize his opponents.

And look, I realize that most folks aren't as politically literate as they should be, but nobody's stupid enough to believe this.  Perhaps some day Republicans will realize that if your arguments are only good enough that diehard supporters will repeat them, your arguments suck.  But hey, they won't be hearing that from me.  After all, with Obama at 57% approval and Republicans down to 19%, this is a confrontation I think we can win.  Apparently, a large majority of America still rejects assholes.  Go figure.