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Obama's mistake, as becomes more clear day by day, was to think the White House was somehow different from any other "big house." Given the brute fact that under Bush the GOP completed its metamorphosis from reactionary political party to actual criminal enterprise, BO should have expected the welcome he is getting. Instead he tried to get all Gentleman Jim with the thugs he was up against. And he got rolled, and will continue to do so.

The conventional wisdom is: when you go up, kick the ass of the first guy who gives you even trivial shit, no matter how suicidal that seems, because thus you announce that you'll stand up for yourself, that you're not to be messed with lightly. But Obama, when he went up, basically announced that he had no stomach for a fight over even the highest matters of principle (torture, war crimes, perversion of the Justice Department, etc). So the GOP thugs realized quickly that he was just new meat.

So now they're in full KKK mode. They're an insurgency now, as Jeff Sessions would say -- like the Taliban. They're in the enviable position of not having to do anything except sabotage and obstruct. Sine they're basically adolescent contrarians, reflexive "againsters," this perfectly suits their natures anyway. They can be against whatever Obama tries to do, fuck it up to the max by insisting on self-destructiev compromises in all the programs, broadcast all kinds of vague directives and provocations to their devolving but well-armed fan base, and then sit back and say "See, government can't accomplish anything."

Under Clinton Newt Gingrich managed to shut down the bureaucracy for few days, in fit of pique, now that the Corporatists have nearly complete control of the media the GOP can do a lot better, as the Town Hells demonstrate. They can shut down democracy itself.

Would this be different if Obama had shown the balls to fight for principle? I like to think so anyway. In any case, it's going to be really hard to turn it around now.