The Morning Plum: The one quote that says it all about Obama and the GOP washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-lin…

— lawhawk (@lawhawk) May 2, 2013

This goes directly to the ongoing debate about the limits of presidential power in moving Congress and to all the pundit sneering about Obama’s insistence that a “permission structure” is needed for GOP officials to compromise with the president. As Brian Beutler put it yesterday, Obama is right: Nothing will happen unless he can “create atmospheric and procedural and rhetorical conditions that might allow House Republicans to give Obama something he wants without appearing to have consorted with him in any way.” He need to “find a sort of legislative wormhole connecting the House GOP’s irrational universe and the universe everyone else inhabits.” GOP Senator Pat Toomey has also confirmed a variation of this, i.e., that Republican voters across the country won’t let their representatives compromise with the president.

Just look at the NYT/CBS polling. It finds that 88 percent continue to support expanding background checks. Fifty nine percent are angry about the vote against the recent vote against Manchin-Toomey, versus only 36 percent who are satisfied or enthusiastic. Eighty percent support a path to citizenship if conditions are met. Fifty seven percent support reducing the deficit with a combination of taxes and spending cuts (the Dem position) while only 36 percent support reducing it with only cuts (the GOP position).

And yet, with the possible exception of immigration — because Republicans perceive a possible existential threat from changing demographics – Obama can’t win GOP cooperation on these issues, because to Republicans, cooperation with Obama equals losing. But the way to change this dynamic is supposedly to show more … presidential leadership, even though public support is already overwhelming for his positions, and even though Republicans don’t want to be publicly associated with Obama’s displays of leadership in the first place, let alone allow him any victories.

Obama hatred subsumes all else, and denying him a political achievement is first and foremost on GOP minds, even on issues with which there’s common cause and even agreement on the principle.

But this isn’t anything we haven’t seen before. The GOP repeatedly called for an individual mandate as a way to improve access to health insurance, but the moment the President took the idea and ran with it, the GOP became its most vociferous opponent and began claiming that it was unconstitutional (and nearly got away with that notion too).

The problem is much more severe in the House than the Senate, but the GOP in both chambers are busy obstructing business of governance all because they can’t be seen as working with the President unless the GOP leaders see an existential threat to their own constituency. That’s why they moved so quick on the FAA sequester adjustment (but oddly aren’t moving to fix it across the board because they’re still largely supporting the massive cuts to government spending).