Obama, new GOP lawmakers are on collision course

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

Obama, new GOP lawmakers are on collision course
By: BYRON YORK
Chief Political Correspondent
November 4, 2010

(AP)
Here's Barack Obama's problem when it comes to dealing with newly elected Republican members of Congress. They are convinced they won because voters rejected Obama's agenda of national health care, spending and bailouts. But Obama cannot admit that his agenda -- his legacy -- is fundamentally flawed and that voters repudiated it. The result will be irreconcilable conflict.

Just look at Ron Johnson, a man likely to be one of the more influential members of the new GOP class in the Senate. Last year, he was a highly successful plastics manufacturer in Oshkosh, Wis., who had never even thought about running for public office. Then he watched Obama and congressional Democrats march through the stimulus, the earmark-laden budget, the auto bailouts, and, finally, Obamacare.

"For me, the final straw was when they passed the health care bill," Johnson said on the campaign trail last week. "I recognized that it is the single greatest assault on our freedom in my lifetime. It is absolutely designed to lead to a government takeover of our health care system. And we don't have to theorize what that is going to result in. It's going to result in rationed care, particularly for the elderly, particularly for the very ill. It's going to lower the quality of our care and reduce medical innovation."