Obama’s never-before-seen 2010 strategy

This master plan was clearly hatched in super-secret, high-level, eyes-only briefings. But the wait is finally over. The plan to prevent every single last Democrat from being bodily thrown into the Capitol fountain on November 2, is, wait for it . . . to be more bipartisan. Obama is going to offer to include Republicans in the governing process, and if they don’t vote for his legislation, he’ll call them obstructionists.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s campaign strategy for Democrats in the November elections is taking shape — appeal to Republicans to make compromises and if they do not, accuse them of obstruction.

Obama is basically angling to call the bluff of Republicans who he believes have done nothing but stand in opposition to his proposals on revamping the U.S. healthcare system and stimulating the economy. . . .

“I told my Republican friends I want to work together with them where I can — and I meant it,” Obama said at a Democratic event on Thursday. “And I told them I will also call them out if they say they want to work on something then when I offer a hand, I get nothing in return.”

Sounds great . . . and rather familiar.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane. This was from one year ago, February 11, 2009.

Despite a pledge to bridge the partisan divide in Washington, President Obama left the capital this week to deploy a battle-tested strategy of bypassing Congress and taking his policy proposals to the people.

The result was a political scene that more resembled the hard-knuckle presidential campaign than the diplomatic transition period.

Obama hit the stump and the airwaves to talk up his economic recovery package and shame its foes into supporting it. Republicans countered with press conferences blasting the Democratic agenda. Both sides traded fire in the editorial pages.

And from March 2009.

Sen. John McCain says President Obama is breaking campaign promises he made to the American people and has passed up numerous opportunities to reach out to Republicans — a pledge the Democrat made repeatedly during their battle for the presidency. . . .

The Arizona senator said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “put it best” when she described the lack of bipartisanship in the drafting of the $787 billion bailout bill, which garnered just three Republican votes in the Senate.

” ‘We won, we wrote the bill.’ That applies not just to that bill, but it does to all of the other pieces of legislation, too,” he said, clearly exasperated.

And let’s not forget that when Obama brings Republicans in to hear their suggestions, it’s all just for show. After all, when one Republican questioned Obama’s spending priorities last year, Obama, reading from the same script as Pelosi, replied in classic bipartisan fashion, “I won.”

The top congressional leaders from both parties gathered at the White House for a working discussion over the shape and size of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. The meeting was designed to promote bipartisanship.

But Obama showed that in an ideological debate, he’s not averse to using a jab.

Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”

Then there was this classic bipartisan, reach-across-the-aisle moment from August of last year.

Transcript.

We’ve got some work to do. I don’t mind, by the way, being responsible. I expect to be held responsible for these issues because I’m the president. But I don’t want the folks that created the mess — I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.

I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.

So we have seen what Obama’s “bipartisan” approach before. It amounts to, “I won, so shut up and get out of the way.”

It worked great for him last year. His signature domestic initiative, health care, is dead. Cap and Trade is dead. He lost Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. And that was when he had supermajorities in both houses of Congress.

So while President Obama says he has a new plan for 2010 in which he plans to be bipartisan and shame the Republicans if they oppose his initiatives, that was the same plan as last year and it didn’t work out all that well.

Maybe if he actually meant what he said, he’d have a little better luck.