It seems kind of odd that so many folks never appear to quite catch on to the following truism: whenever Democratics disagree with Republicans, they're portrayed as "speaking out", "standing up", and generally engaging in acts of unprecedented honor and bravery - whereas whenever Republicans disagree with Democratics, they're inevitably portrayed as "obstructionist" and generally evil bostiches. In the new lexicon, "bipartisan" means "agrees with Democratics".
Now, things are about to get really interesting: Republicans gave in and agreed to increased taxes with no spending cuts during the recent "fiscal cliff" circus, and now face an artifact of Barky's own creation: across the board spending cuts. Suddenly, little tiny beads of sweat are starting to break across the mighty brow of Barky, as it occurs to him that the dastardly Republicans aren't going to go for any tax increases because they just did that.
And while Barky doesn't care about cuts to the military side of things, the impending cuts to his social agenda aren't quite what he had in mind; the grand plan was to force ever more increases through, as Barky's made abundantly clear in almost every campaign speech he's given in the past few weeks. He's sort of painted himself into a corner, here: his pals in the Senate haven't passed a budget since the introduction of the iPad, and the impending spending cuts were his idea; a means, so he thought, of forcing Republicans to agree to more tax increases. It actually never occurred to Him that Republicans might just kick back and say, "Bring 'em on."
