Free Republic

President Barack Obama’s influence is disappearing to the point that he is just a “minor actor on Capitol Hill” and even Democrats believe he is doing little but get in the way, Karl Rove has charged. “No president is ever irrelevant, but less than 10 weeks into his second term Mr. Obama’s power is waning,” Rove writes in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. “Even members of his own party view him as an obstacle to getting things done.” …

January 22, 2010 Obama-drooling media create their very own lame duck By Joan Swirsky That's right, and it wasn't only Katie Couric. For the past two years, when Obama was in campaign mode and after his Acorn- and foreign-money-fueled election, the entire leftwing media debased what once passed for legitimate journalism. With absolute consistency, they: Failed utterly to vet an inexperienced, document-concealing candidate (we still haven't seen Obama's Illinois law license or an authentic birth certificate). Failed to investigate the veracity of aggrandizing information spewed by Obama's spin doctors and then repeated their spin (they still say, for instance, that...

US President Barack Obama suffered a painful defeat in Massachusetts on Tuesday. With mid-term elections looming, it means that Obama will have to fundamentally re-think his political course. German commentators say it is the end of hope.

After much congressional handwringing over what budget process reform to attach to a must-pass increase in the debt ceiling, support for the legislative proposal crafted by Senate Budget Committee leaders Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) has crumbled. It fell apart as many members recognized two political facts of life. One is that it would inevitably lead to tax increases. The other, reinforced by the Massachusetts election, is that Americans are in no mood for a back-room, members-only commission that rushes its plan through Congress just after the November election.

I’m not sure when everything went wrong here, but I fear that the damage is now irreparable — and that Obama’s agenda is going to be severely scaled back as a result.