Obama broadly follows Ronald Reagan’s (second-term) security policy, George H.W. Bush’s spending policy, Bill Clinton’s tax policy, the bipartisan Squam Lake Group’s financial-regulatory policy, Perry’s immigration policy, John McCain’s climate-change policy, and Mitt Romney’s health-care policy (at least when Romney was governor of Massachusetts). And yet he has gotten next to no Republicans to support their own policies.
Indeed, like Clinton before him, Obama has been unable to get Republican senators like Susan Collins to vote for her own campaign-finance policies, McCain to vote for his own climate-change policy, and – most laughably – Romney to support his own health-care plan. Likewise, he has been unable to get Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan to endorse his own Medicare cost-control proposals.
There are obvious reasons for this. A large chunk of the Republican base, including many of the party’s largest donors, believes that any Democratic president is an illegitimate enemy of…
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