Obama the maverick
Happened to stumble on this little gem, to help illustrate how little the senator has done. His senior strategist lists unamimous consent measures, not even voted upon!, as examples of how Obama stood up to his party. You can't make this stuff up.
Not Just the Most Liberal Senator
Barack Obama is perhaps also the least effective Senator. This exchange
between Chris Wallace and David Axelrod on yesterday's Fox News Sunday is
hilarious:
Fox News' Chris Wallace:
Now, David, McCain and Palin do have records of
going up against their own parties. When has Barack Obama ever gone up
against the Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate?
Obama Senior Strategist David Axelrod:
... One of the first things that
Senator Obama did when he came to the U.S. Senate was push for the most
far-reaching ethics reforms that we've seen since Watergate. That didn't
please people on either side of the aisle, and he has done that
consistently in his career. He's reached across party lines to find
consensus and he's taken on his own party on issues like, like ethics
reform. You know, what was interesting about these attacks about bipartisanship
and so on is that people like Dick Lugar, the very respected Republican
senator from Indiana, spoke out and said, These are just partisan
attacks. I've worked with Barack Obama.' They worked together on arms
control. Senator Coburn in Oklahoma worked together with him on budget
issues, like putting the budget on Google so we can see how our money is
being spent, putting caps on the contracts around Katrina rebuilding.
Senator Obama has a strong recor d of working across party lines to
produce progress for people.
Wallace:
But David, because you guys always talk about ethics
legislation and the nuclear non-proliferation deal with Dick Lugar, I
went back and looked -- both of those measures passed by unanimous
consent. They were so accepted by the Senate that there was not even a
vote. In fact, ethics legislation was one of the campaign promises.
These were not -- if I may, if I may. These were not areas where Barack
Obama went up against the leadership of his own party nearly in the way
that John McCain did on campaign finance reform, on limiting
interrogation of terror detainees, on immigration reform. He did not go
up against his own party on either of those issues.
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