President Obama is back in his campaign comfort zone: Smiting his political enemies

 According to Politico,

Obama’s turnaround in recent weeks – he’s seized the offensive with a series of controversial executive actions and challenges to leaders in his own party on the budget — can be attributed to a fundamental change in his political mindset, according to current and former aides. He’s gone from thinking of himself as a sitting (lame) duck, they tell me, to a president diving headlong into what amounts to a final campaign – this one to preserve his legacy, add policy points to the scoreboard, and – last but definitely not least – to inflict the same kind of punishment on his newly empowered Republican enemies, who delighted in tormenting him when he was on top.

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“‘Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose’ — Barack and Bobby McGee,” says former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry. “President Obama is free to take the risks and use executive authority that will either make him a much more popular president with rising approval rates or get him impeached by a Republican Congress that won’t be able to control itself. We can contemplate the possibility of each result while smoking a Cuban cigar.”

Republicans didn’t really think that President Obama was going to let their years of obstruction did they? The odds are that the president’s first act of punishment could be a veto of the bill to authorize the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. During his press conference on Friday, the president said, “On most issues, in order for their initiatives to become law, I’m going to have sign off. And that means they have to take into account the issues that I care about, just as I’m going to have to take into account the issues that they care about.” In other words if Republicans think that they can unilaterally jam their agenda down the president’s throat, they are going to be in for a big surprise.

Unless McConnell and Boehner can pass legislation that contains some of what the president wants, the American people can expect a lot of vetoes. House and Senate Democrats have already pledged to hold firm and give Obama the backing he needs to make sure that his vetoes are upheld, which means that the Republican controlled Congress won’t be getting much done without the help of Democrats.

The shoe will soon be on the other foot, and Republicans are about to pay a heavy price for their years long campaign of Obama obstruction