“He Might Hit Me Back!”
TBogg, the right is fretting about Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff:
Obama’s selection of Rahm Emanuel to be Chief of Staff sends a very important signal about what we can expect from an Obama administration. Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff is absolutely correct that the “combination of ability to knock heads and aknowledge of Congress [is] an excellent combination”…
Obama sold the “new kind of politics” and “unity” spin for the rubes, and apparently it sold quite well, but it was just clever marketing. Obama has always been willing to play hardball.
No, the lesson here is that Obama intends to play Good Cop/Bad Cop.
Obama knows his strength, his brand, is his ability to appear conciliatory, thoughtful and sympathetic. He can’t be the Bad Guy in his administration. So Obama has hired a Chief of Staff who can handle the Enemies List.
Any fool knows politics depends on the velvet glove as much as the iron fist. If the conservatives actually believed their own rhetoric that Obama’s message of “a new politics” meant “kumbaya” they have no standing to complain about Mr. Obama’s choice of an enforcer.
That’s one of the reasons the Republicans lost by the way: they began believing their own bullshit.
