The American Spectator

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Obama: If You Agree With Me, It's Bipartisan

By Philip Klein on 2.6.09 @ 9:15AM

You know President Obama is getting frustrated when he's forced to fall back on tired old campaign lines to try and rally support for the stimulus package (yes, even "Fired up? Ready to go" made a comeback).

Speaking at a Democratic retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia Obama said, "I welcome this debate, but we are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin."

"The American people are watching," he continued. "They didn't send us here to get bogged down with the same old delays, the same old distractions, the same talking points, the same cable chatter. I mean, aren't y'all tired of that stuff? They didn't vote for the false theories of the past and they didn't vote for phoney arguments and petty politics."

Then he said, mockingly, "What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending — that's the whole point! Seriously.”

So in other words, Obama welcomes a bipartisan debate, but only if Republicans reject their own policies in favor of his spending priorities, only if that debate doesn't delay passage of the bill that he wants, and as long as cable news shows don't scrutinize what is actually in the legislation he's proposing.