"Conciliatory Rhetoric As A Ruthless Strategy"

Last year, I wrote this about Obama:

By adopting conservative positions, the President has backed the Republican Party into a corner and forced it to become increasingly radicalized in its quest to opposed All Things Barack. In other words, he took the GOP's Achilles Heel, namely, the intense hatred within its ranks for America's first Black president, and fully exploited it to the long-term detriment of the Republican Party.

Although I stand by that statement, I was also among the group of people who thought Obama gradually adopted this strategy only when it became apparent that the GOP was going to obstruct him on everything.  But this excellent post by Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly makes it clear that this was Obama's strategy from day one:

[T]he historical record shows that he wasn’t unaware of Republican plans from the outset. In his book The New New Deal, Michael Grunwald points out that, during the negotiations over the initial stimulus package (which was signed by President Obama 28 days after he was inaugurated), a couple of Republican Senators informed Vice President Biden that the plan was to obstruct anything the President tried to do. So, at minimum, we know that Obama was not uninformed.

Obama then took this awareness of the Republicans' plan and used it against them, knowing -- of course -- that the GOP will oppose everything he proposes, including ideas that Republicans once supported. LeTourneau writes:

The scenario that played out over and over again on everything from health care reform to budgets was that President Obama would put his ideas on the table and then ask Republicans to do the same. Most of the time, they simply refused. As the President demonstrated that he was willing to meet them more than halfway, the demands they did articulate became more and more extreme - leading to things like a possible default over raising the debt limit.

Knowing that the Republican position was simply to obstruct, President Obama offered pragmatic conciliations, recognizing that the closer he moved to what had traditionally been “sensible” Republican policies, the more difficult that would become. Their options were to either work with him on solutions (his preference) or continue to obstruct - painting themselves into an ever-more extremist corner.

LeTourneau closes her article by stating that it might be too soon to say whether or not “conciliatory rhetoric as ruthless strategy” is a success. But I think the strategy has been enormously successful.  Just listen to what the Republican candidates for president are saying right now: some support banning abortion for 10-year-old girls who conceive because they were raped, many support mandatory deportation for all illegal aliens as well as their children who were born in the U.S., most support mandatory perpetual warfare in the Middle East and mandatory rejection of climate science, and on and on and on.

Well played, Mr. President.