Jim DeMint (Getty Images/AFP/Tim Sloan)
When Barack Obama served in the Senate,
Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina didn’t think he was too bad of a guy. That was in the days when Obama would listen to DeMint on the floor and vote for one of his amendments, to the chagrin of his leadership.
Those days have been over for a while, but the door slammed shut for good last week, when DeMint observed on a conference call organized by a conservative group: “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Today, at an event at Children’s National Medical Center, Obama quoted those words right back and used them as a rallying cry against Republicans who oppose his health care overhaul plans.
“Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics,” Obama said. “This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses, and breaking America’s economy.”
Obama didn’t even mention DeMint by name, which probably highlights how angry he was, since he knows DeMint quite well. During the 2007 debate on ethics reform legislation in the Senate, Obama was one of just nine Democratic senators to vote against a motion to table DeMint’s amendment to require the disclosure of who sponsors earmarks and who receives them. To appreciate how surprising Obama’s vote was, consider that the Democrat who was trying to kill DeMint’s amendment was Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin — Obama’s Illinois colleague.
DeMint said Obama was presiding over the Senate that day and probably just agreed with his arguments. “He was actually listening, which doesn’t happen very often around here,” DeMint told me at the time. “I think he just made his decision on the merits.” Here’s how DeMint summed up his view of Obama after that incident: “Whatever he lacks in experience, he makes up for it in intelligence and thoughtfulness.”
Well, maybe Obama will make this an intelligent and thoughtful Waterloo.
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