Judas Gregg

Yesterday Senator Judd Gregg withdrew from consideration for the position of Secretary of Commerce in the Obama administration. His "irresolvable conflicts" with President Obama over the stimulus plan and overall economic agenda clearly existed when he accepted the nomination, and his decision to withdraw now is damaging both to the administration's credibility and its efforts to create a bipartisan culture in the capital. One might almost speculate that Gregg had never intended to take the job, and that his post-acceptance withdrawal was a calculated move to attack the President.

Bipartisanship can only work if both sides are willing to come to the table. President Obama has brought republicans into the White House and appointed two of them (Gregg would have been the third) to Cabinet positions. He has solicited their opinions and compromised with them on the stimulus bill. And yet, after 12 years of their failed policies, which contributed greatly to the mess in which we are currently mired, the republicans seem intent on thumbing their noses at the President and changing from the party of destruction to the party of obstruction. 

The time for bartisanship is over. Our President was elected with a mandate, and he must lead. He should be angry with Judas Gregg, who has set his economic agenda back and forced him to seek a replacement. The replacement should be a democrat. Now is the time to marginalize the republicans, even further than they have marginalized themselves, based not on who they are or their religious and cultural beliefs, but on their political agenda and the policies they espouse. Enough is enough.