“When debating with Republicans, the president uses tough rhetoric, and he dished some today. He said he was ‘itching for a fight on a whole range of issues.’ But when talking about Democrats, he has the intensity associated with family arguments. He was as heated as he gets in public (still not warm enough for your hot chocolate, but above his baseline, which is the serving temperature for white wine). He warned liberals of being ‘sanctimonious’ and engaging in a no-win political fight simply to stir up their bodily humors. He compared it to the last dead-end fight liberals wanted to wage—over the public option during the debate over health care reform, in which they were willing to give up the chance to extend insurance to millions for a narrow ideological crusade…

“Let’s pause to measure the distance: Two years ago Barack Obama was the Democratic Party’s great hope. Now he is being accused of undermining one of the party’s core moral principles.”

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“Former Vice President Al Gore’s team stayed away from issues like global warming and gun control because it was afraid of losing states like West Virginia and Tennessee. Well, guess what? Gore lost them anyway.

“Four years later, Sen. John Kerry was so fearful of being called weak on national defense that he bragged publicly about being for the funding of the Iraq war before being against it. Again, game, set, match to the GOP.

“And now we have Obama, who spent two years ignoring Republicans, now deciding to throw in the towel on tax cuts before the opening bell rings. If the president of the United States really believes that he is in such a weak position that he cannot stand up to a party that wants to give tax cuts to millionaires while cutting benefits for unemployed families at Christmastime, I fear not only for the Democratic Party but also for America.”

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“‘For too long, Washington has been a place where any compromise was seen as a failure,’ he said, ‘where victory was defined, not by what you achieved for the country but by who you defeated in partisan warfare.'”