McCain blames Obama for partisan climate in DC

By David Edwards and Gavin Dahl
Sunday, December 20th, 2009 -- 11:30 am
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homersimpsonsobamamccain McCain blames Obama for partisan climate in DCThe responsibility for the most partisan atmosphere in Washington history goes to President Barack Obama, according to Sen. John McCain. "[Obama] said there would be a change in the climate in Washington," McCain told Fox News' Chris Wallace. "There's been a change. It's more partisan. It's more bitterly divided than it's been."

A few Republicans have participated in crafting major legislation during Obama's first year in office. Three Republican Senators voted for the stimulus bill and Gang of Six Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe voted for the health care bill coming out the Senate finance committee.

But for the most part, Republicans have voted together to block Democrats' attempts to pass legislation more often than any Congress in history. On December 18, Republicans broke the modern-day record for the most filibusters in history, according to Campaign for America's Future.

Calling the US Senate 2009's Worst Person of the Year, Bob Burnett points out obstructionism means "critical issues such as job creation, reform of the financial system, and deficit reduction will not be addressed until next year."

As recently as September, the American public still credited Obama for his efforts at bipartisan lawmaking. Gallup reported, "Sixty percent say Obama has made a sincere effort to work with Republicans, down from prior measurements but still the majority view."

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Two weeks ago, President Obama insisted that creating new American jobs will require bipartisan effort. "I'm confident we can put our economic troubles behind us," he said. "But it's going to require some work and cooperation and a seriousness of purpose here in Washington."

McCain's statement that Obama has failed to "sit down and bring the CSPAN cameras in" is also interesting considering McCain's criticism of Al Franken for cutting off Joe Leiberman on the Senate floor. He said it was the "first time I've seen a member denied a minute or two to finish his remarks." As Rachel Maddow recently reported, footage of McCain doing the same thing disappeared from the CSPAN archives.

This video is from Fox's Fox News Sunday, broadcast Dec. 20, 2009.



Download video via RawReplay.com

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Story comments are below...

  • icenine
    Obama has bent over (figuratively as yet) to placate the right wing to the extent that he's in trouble with his own base on several issues and still this old tool McCain lies about who's responsible for the hyper-partisanship of DC. The Republicans have one rule- be against everything Obama and the Dems propose regardless of merit. McCain is simply doing the Rove spin- blame your own liabilities on the other guy and trust that the public is generally too stupid or incurious to know you're lying.
  • disgustedindc
    John McCain is a troll.
  • TonyRage
    The only reason his hypothesis is even plausible, is because most democrats were (and are) too wimpy to have stood against Bush (especially after 9/11), or else that would have been the most divided congress ever.
  • ggmome73
    This is the true definition of a 'forked tongue', McCain is the quintessential snake tongue in the Senate, and his assessment of President Obama creating the riff in bi-partisanship displays this fact. The Republicans, from Inaugration Day displayed their intent to make it hard for Obama, and deployed every tactic they were taught from birth, to cause division. I might add, that there were Democrats who assisted them in their divisive tricks.

    This was never discussed when Bush and gang were in power and what they did to destroy this Country. So, McCain take your snake tongue and keep it in your mouth.
  • bushsworstnightmare
    correction

    partisanship? I blame bush.
  • bushsworstnightmare
    partinship? I blame bush.
  • darker
    McCAIN has NO HONOR, NO MORALS, NO DECENCY.
    He's all about HYPE and SOUR GRAPES.
    Pathetic.
  • chabuka
    McCain blame President Obama for his losing...I thought the Senate was supposed to be more concerned with foreign affairs and oversight.. thought the "people's House" took care of domestic problems for the people..like affordable Health Care Insurance, jobs, etc....but then as usual the Republicans want to run every thing..just can't get over the fact that turd-blossom Rove promised them 100 years of rule, and they lost.....(sounds like the Hitler's version of a 1000 year rule under Nazi reign in Germany..doesn't it)...nothing partisan or dictorial about a "one party rule for 100 years"...huh...McCain, Turd Blossom...?
  • wial
    He reminds me of the base commander in Avatar. stupid dickish evil. Hasn't history given us at least one too many little veterans with chips on their shoulders?
  • stfu and stand down, mccain. we all caught your act on radio hanoi ... little mr. my - daddy's - the - commander - of - the - fleet - media - war - hero whaaaa whaaaa

    hqt 2 sqd 1 cav 122nd inf 4th id
    camp anari, pleiku 1969
  • airjackie
    McCain can't get pass his last chance to the White House. Now Republicans followed Limbaugh's advice and did everything they could to make sure Obama and the US failed. He iinvited them to the White House and even spoke to most of the GOP about their suggestions with no results. Now the Bill will pass and their made. This isn't about Obama or the GOP it's about the American taxpayers getting help with our own money instead of giving it to Afghanistan and Iraq Government. The GOP were so mad they even blocked the Defense Bill for our Troops overseas. When Bush illegally invaded Iraq I had to buy my son his bullet proof vest because the Govenment spent the money on the bribes and blackmail. During the Bush years our troops had the cost of meals/cleaning taken out of their pay check. So all that stuff our We support our Troops was lip service. Michelle Obama had to hear first hand from the soldiers and their families what was really going on.
  • kavika LoveAll
    i hate senators, especially the likes of john mcstink, 'pull-the-plug-on-grandma' chuck grassley, jim dementia, sam brownstain, hmmmm, who else? there are so many in this very moment who are constantly breaching the separation of church & state at every turn. two senators in particular (brownstain from kansas & dementia from s.carolina) were caught red-handed w/ another psycho pastor praying to jesus for healthcare reform to fail. sadly, for teabagging traitors such as mcstink, demint and their ilk, YOU LOSE! the foundation for health care reform will be laid by xmas thanks to the dems. suck on it! repukes!
  • sanchosdad
    Wifecheater McCrashfiveplanes is just a bitter old man making excuses for blowing the election by his own bad judgment. he should be chastised for cheating on his wife ever time he opens his mouth. and when he says it is 'old news' remind him that it happened AFTER his POW strint.

    see if anybody can find out from old Wifecheater how being a POW makes you smart. i cant figure it out for the life of me.
  • Phil E. Drifter
    GUESS WHAT? BOTH parties are on the same payroll to project the illusion of democracy.

    IF they were truly two independent parties, the Dems would have nailed Bush's nuts to the wall over his illegal war. INSTEAD, they claim 'move forward not back' the same way they let, even encouraged by voting for, impeachment of Clinton over a blowjob.

    1. vote 3rd party
    2. kill pigs

    MEANWHILE: those two parties are so engrained in american politics that they've passed laws PREVENTING 3RD PARTIES from entering elections. Case in point: Loretta Nall's Libertarian run for Governorship of Alabama in '08: she needed to collect an ungodly number of signatures just to get on the ballot. You call that 'democracy'?
  • Savantster
    The biggest part of the problem, I think, is that 1/2 the Dems are fully pro-corporate for various reasons. There are almost 1/2 of the Dems that voted against Iraq, and wanted to impeach Bush. The _leadership_ seems to be on the status quo side, so the _party_ fails to act, but Many Dems are pretty pissy about all of this.

    We're watching the coopting of the Dems by the right-wing, which is why I say left/right is valid, Dem/Repub is not.
  • lorn
    Time warp. I saw in the late 90's with Clinton what you now seem to be experiencing.
    I say the takeover is old news, fully entrenched and that it is time to go with a new party, third party, Nader, Greens, McKinney whatever.
    I encourage you to fight hard for your progressive ideals and to make your views known to as many party insiders as you can access. Soon enough you will have no doubts that the party is over.

    As for impeachment? The closest a vote ever got to being held was when Kucinich tried to introduce articles to that effect in Congress.
    Pelosi with full support of the party bosses rallied the troops to vote his efforts into oblivion and to kill debate or discussion of them. http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/255999

    Seven Democrats did not vote.
    Two hundred and twenty seven Democrats voted to disappear the Kucinich articles of impeachment.
    Zero, that is 0, not one, not one freaking Democrat voted out of line.

    Dems voted as a unified block to torpedo the Kucinich impeachment effort, and no other ever saw the light of day, just as the evil Queen Pelosi wanted.
    Left right is mostly a manifestation of propaganda foisted on us to keep the D and R game going. The old British empire divide and rule is in play here. We the people are losing to the fascists in both parties, who are really united, while they playact and pretend to fight each other.
  • Savantster
    "Soon enough you will have no doubts that the party is over."

    Another part of the problem (between you and I).. you seem to think I see any validity in the premise of Dems being "left" or "progressive" or "salvageable".. I've been saying, like you, for a very long time now that the Dems as a party are dead. There is no real Dem party in America, and there is no real two party system in America.
  • Patriot101
    Are you kidding McCain? You and your party have called the President a Muslim, denied he is a American,called Healthcare his Waterloo and you go on Fox News and spit this garbage? Burn in Hell with Bin Laden you Moron!
  • quizmos
    There is a reason McCain ain't President, and this kind of commentary is exactly why. He was my favorite Senator for a long time and I wanted to see him run for President, but he has his nose so far up the ass of the Right wing that he can't reason any longer with centrists like myself. His comments about Obama are kind compared to those he made when running against him. I guess sore losers are the same world round.
  • realityhurtsGOP
    What a lieing hypocrtie ! After 8 yrs of calling anybody who wanted to debate policy issues traitors and terrorist supporting pinko commie who hate our troops! McBS blames the receivers of those slanderus attacks. The depth of lies and complete lack of reality based BS the right has to come up with.. is in direct proportion to the depth of failures they have been . Pathetic.
  • Spire
    Will somebody PLEASE find this guy's meds?
  • If your story begins with "according to Sen. John McCain," you are writing the wrong story. Sorry.
  • MrPunch
    seriously guys....can you not tell that this type of inflammation is meant to divide us? Why are you falling for it?

    You know they just took some major steps to create global government right? What the fed did to the US, the world banks will do to the world. Global taxation! Guys wake up and stop getting angry over stupid issues that are meant to do just that!

    You know they've been trying to create global government for a long long time right? And not a good kind...

    http://www.wikinfo.org/upload/6/62/Soviet_coat_...

    http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/media/image...

    http://bizbox.slate.com/blog/ObamaLogo.jpg
  • Savantster
    it's not just meant to divide us, it's dividing politicians as well. This isn't about all the leaders being in on some secret, everyone is being manipulated in this.

    Being able to talk about where blame lies in a rigged game neither negates the acceptance that the game is rigged, or that there is blame to go around. It's distractionary, sure, but we can multi-task and keep coming back to points that matter (like the Dems are supporting a lot of the same policies as the Repubs, so what's the core difference? right?)

    At the end of the day, the illusion holds because there ARE differences, and not everyone on both sides has bought into the single agenda of the corporations.
  • Scott Olivia
    Has anyone told this senile old man that the election is over?
  • richlu
    "If Democrats don't do what the GOP wants, they are partisan." Strange definition!
  • Gary Goldbladt
    I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist. But, isn't cspan a taxpayer financed operation? Don't we have the right to know or investigate the reason that this tape was removed permanently from the CSPAN archive. There should be an investigation.
  • MrPunch
    Its funny how people LOOOVE to bash the repubs so much...

    Its the only way to control the masses is by DIVIDE AND CONQUER.

    All you GOP bashing fools better wake up. There is no REAL divide, only an artificial one programmed in your heads.

    Its so sick to see you people get off on your mob rule mentality.

    What exactly is the difference between both parties again? How is it any more meaningful than sports teams?

    You are being used as tools to establish world government! Once the world government is in place be prepared to be DRAINED by the centralized world banks, even more than the centralized FED drained america.

    STOP playing the stupid sports game set up for you(ie gop vs dem), it is totally irrelevant and a distraction.

    PLease look up more info and get educated about what is going on and stop attacking each other to validate the ideas that were implanted in you via media.
  • Scuby
    "What exactly is the difference between both parties again?"

    Well, lets throw out a hypothetical or two. Democrats are in power and are setting the legislative agenda. Their two main goals thus far have been to stabilize and re-invigorate the economy, and to pass some form of healthcare reform. Here comes the hypothetical. If McCain/Palin had won the election, and republicans had maintained control of Congress....what do you think their main agenda would have been? Who knows for sure, but I can tell you this....it wouldn't have anything to do with healthcare, and it would definately involve deficit spending and tax cuts for those that don't need it. With Palin in there, they would probably be attempting to outlaw abortion and mandate bible study in public schools! Oh, and Im sure they would be itching to start another war somewhere too!
  • lorn
    "thus far have been to stabilize and re-invigorate the economy(1), and to pass some form of healthcare reform(2).

    Some would call it corporate welfare, some would call stealing from American taxpayers and giving to corporate polluters and cheaters. Some would call it failing American homeowners while banks feast on free money.
    As for health care, it has best been described by Dennis Kucinich as a bailout for the insurance industry dressed up as health care. An accurate description.

    As for your apocalyptic musings about McCain and Palin? Yes they are insane, and the world would be better off if they were locked up.
    Since they take their marching orders from the same people Obama does, it is hard to say what would have happened if they won. In any case it was the Democrats turn, which is why those two loons were chosen in the first place. There are many smart analysts who believe that public outrage with Bush was preventing him from doing things that Obama now gets away with. Obama continues torture even though he talks against it. Obama has massively increased the use of mercenaries in Afghanistan, and as you know is also increasing troop levels there, and he has greatly increased the use of killer drones in Pakistan helping create a refugee crisis of over 1 million people.
    Obama is staying the Bush course in Iraq, and like Bush he is itching to start another war in Pakistan, something Palin also would have done. Iran, same thing.

    As for outlawing abortion? All the pending health care legislation removes the funding for abortion for poor women.........Democratic legislation.

    PS care to learn about the Obama continuation of bioweapons programs?
    http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/

    You have obviously figured out the fact that Republicans are fascist criminal scum. You need to apply the same objectivity and clear thinking when you evaluate your Dems. If you do you will realize that they are the same animals with slightly different slogans and sales pitches. Please wake up!
  • Savantster
    "As for outlawing abortion? All the pending health care legislation removes the funding for abortion for poor women.........Democratic legislation."

    BlueDog Dem, right-wing Dem, not a left-leaning Dem.. The mainstream Dems don't want that Amendment in, but they are bending over backwards to appease the right-wing to get a bill passed.

    Which is the point I've been making all along.. The Dems are no longer a left-leaning party, so you should stop talking about "Dems this" or "Republicans that" (except in the case of the Republicans, they are right-wing and fringe right-wing).
  • Phil E. Drifter
    There's not much difference except the labels. They're both in cooperation on most matters, the importance is that they project the illusion of democracy. To give the public the impression that they're actually two different parties with 2 different goals. They have the same goals: to protect their own jobs.
  • ProgressiveInNewYork
    While I do think that nationally the parties are pretty corrupt, to say there is no difference is just ridiculous. If you don't see any difference maybe you need to change your prescription. There are those on the left as obstructionist as the right but on the whole, I would take the left any day. At least they understand that one can have differences and still reach agreements. Not maybe what I want but I wasn't elected.
  • luschnig
    PinNY, I appreciate your take on the political situation. Though I tend to think that the Democratic party is unified more around the idea of good government (balancing taxes with expenditures, getting value for money, efficiencies as far as they're possible on such a large scale and other such unglamorous factors) than clear left principles, despite their general bias towards the working class, I would not call it a left wing party. Republicans are right wing and despise the government, so they tend to do government badly. Of course, both parties pay inordinate attention to the corporate sector. That is because America is a capitalist country and the corporations have got a lot of money. If anyone wants to scour their influence from American politics, they have to first rid America of corporate power. The inconvenient truth is that money colors everything in America. If you doubt this, recall the truth that in 2000 Ralph Nader was not only the second, if not the first, riches person left standing, but that his campaign as it turns out was bankrolled by corporate money funneled through a Republican operative.
  • MrPunch
    Well maybe I am not crazy and just looking at the bigger picture and realizing the differences are petty caricatures and rhetoric that are provided by media and figureheads.

    I often ask people what they believe the differences to be and I've never really found any meaningful asnwers, other than the trivial "sports team" type differences..

    What are the differences, and is the structure more about maintaining a divide or about valid issues?

    Is the left/right paradigm not a fraud? Is there likely not more in common in terms of what people want across the board, and the divide really just keep us in the hands of international bankers who play us off each other as they monopolize crazy amounts of control?
  • Savantster
    The left/right paradigm is the fact, the D/R differences are the fraud.

    That people keep mixing up Liberal and Dem, that's a problem since the Dems are no longer a "liberal party", but almost wholly compromised and full of "conservative Dems" (which is an oxymoron).

    We're trying to fit 10 ideologies into 2 parties, and 1 ideology is winning out (pro-corporate america).
  • ProgressiveInNewYork
    Wow, sounds like conspiracy theories for breakfast to me.
    Sorry, I just don't buy the big "int'l bankers etc etc". I think short sightedness, greed, stupidity and being power hungry is a more realistic explanation. But have fun with your international conspiracies. It's been around for a long time and will for many years to come.
  • MrPunch
    Yes it has been around for a long time. And the longer its around for the more it becomes evident that there is an "agenda". We are becoming more and more Dependant on global entities and less sovereign as nations...It seems obvious to me but I am also interested in other peoples view points.

    Things get so much worse as they tell us its getting better...Its like being put-down. I mean they guage the recovery of the economy based on how well wall street is doing an not the unemployment rate... Something screwy is going on.

    It must be easy for you to dismiss a whole dynamic of thought as "conspiracy", but I bet it is harder for you to actually understand and rationalize some of the more complex components of politics.. Like economic assassination , manipulation of public opinion, hidden agendas...These things all exist and are relevant, no?
  • paquiderm sarcoma
    newsflash, rawstory skimping on the investigative reporting while posting CIA psy-ops disinformation - Iranian troops did not sequester an Iraqi oil well, as spinned by the Saudi natl news agency. in other non-news, Obama's Yemeni bombing targeting CIA's al qaeda puppets killed a lot of innocent children
  • lorn
    True. And their work in propping up the myth of the two party democracy never stops. Even as Democrats and Republicans agree on war funding, torture, bank bailouts, insurance company bailouts, new war in Pakistan, more war in Afghanistan and staying the course in Iraq.........still the lying media pigs try to sell us the big lie that there is some sort of conflict between Repugs and Dems.

    The work together to benefit corporate America at our expense. Lying media scum then do damage control to confuse people, to get them to ignore how Dems and Repubs do the same thing. They try to get people to focus on the meaningless bun fights and he said/she said silliness. They give this stuff headlines while the dirty business of war gets the short shift or is simply unreported.
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