That's a pretty fatuous statement when you consider the goals of the GOP over the past 38 years. Did Obama work with the GOP to privatize entitlement programs? Did he pass a major tax cut? Did he appoint pro-life judges? Did he move towards transforming the Department of Education to state block grants?
My comment was somewhat tongue in cheek. I'm well aware of the goals of the GOP, thank you very much.
I'm also very much aware of the fact that the GOP was obstructions to his agenda, effectively neutering his work. (Also hopeful for the destruction of the GOP once Mueller is done with his work).
That said, Obama's support for the fiasco in Afghanistan is not "liberal" in any way, and his failure to even bring up the notion of the criminality of the 2008 financial crisis showed that he was beholden to his corporate donors more than the country.
That's a strangely specific list of questions, but here is an attempt to address them:
> Did Obama work with the GOP to privatize entitlement programs?
No, but he often supported or considered cuts to Social Security and Medicare (including in the context of working with the GOP). For example, Obama's executive order 13531 established the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform ("Simpson-Bowles"), which recommended cuts to Social Security.
Obama nominated a judge who failed to be confirmed in part because of Democratic opposition to his (purported) "votes in the legislature to retain Confederate insignia in the state flag of Georgia, restrict abortion, and ban same-sex marriage".
> Did he move towards transforming the Department of Education to state block grants?
No, but the Obama Administration supported funding for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund in the stimulus bill, a relatively significant block grant from the Department of Education.
It's not a strangely specific list if you look at the GOP platform in each Presidential election year from 1976 through 2016. Starting in 1980, at the conclusion of the national "ideological sort", the common thread of GOP policy goals has been:
1. Reduce taxes and simplify the tax code
2. Appoint federalist pro-life judges
3. Privatize federal programs that can be privatized
4. Devolve funding and authority to the states through block grants
5. Oppose gun control
6. Require a balanced budget, and cut spending to do it
7. Subsidize school choice
8. Reform and cut welfare
9. Reduce the influence of unions
10. Increase defense spending
I didn't make those up; I literally went to the UCSB Presidency Project for each of those 11 cycles and made a text file capturing the policy objectives of the GOP (several months ago, not just as a freaky obsessive response to your comment).
There are other policy items that come and go; for instance, in the 80s and early 90s, the GOP was the party of term limits. Starting in the 90s, they became the party of tort, liability, and malpractice reform. For a brief, sparkling moment, they were the party of guaranteed-issue private health insurance. But those 10 items are basically unchanged, and none of them are Democratic goals.
To your specific arguments:
1. Obama opposed privatization and expanded federal entitlements dramatically.
2. Obama increased several taxes, and increased the tax burden on upper-income families and in support of the ACA; those increases would have been starker had he not been held hostage by a united GOP legislature that, for instance, required him to extend some of the Bush tax cats in exchange for funding the government. Not to mention: his biggest cuts were part of the ARRA, which prevented a potential second Great Depression.
3. Obama did not appoint pro-life or federalist judges of any sort.
4. Obama presided over the implementation of Common Core, which dramatically increased the federal influence over K-12 education and made him the bête noire of conservative educational wonks.
So, no, President Obama was not a "good Republican President". Respectfully, I think you might basically have to not know what the Republican party has stood for for the last ~40 years to believe that.
