Sherman's March in reverse... How far reaching are his strategies? Who is the ultimate puppet master?



Stealth war: Obama sabotages GOP
By: Charles Mahtesian
June 3, 2009 04:15 AM EST

Tuesday’s announcement of Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.) as President Barack Obama’s nominee for Army secretary makes perfect sense from a policymaking standpoint. It’s hard to find a member of Congress who’s more well-respected or more steeped in military personnel issues than McHugh, a senior House Armed Services Committee member who has wrestled with issues ranging from recruitment to base closure to the role of women in combat.

Yet it’s also hard to find a choice better calibrated to meet the Obama administration’s political imperatives. All at once, Obama has selected a nominee who burnishes his bipartisan credentials, opened up a seat prime for Democratic pickup and drained the GOP reservoir of one of the few remaining Northeastern moderates.

It’s an event that’s happening with enough frequency to suggest the presence of a design, a plan that not only sketches the outline of a reelection strategy but manages to drive a wedge into the opposition at the same time.[b] Call it a Sherman’s March in reverse — an audacious attempt by Obama to burn down any lines of escape for Republicans from their one refuge of popularity, the deep South.

Since taking office in January, Obama has made an effort to convert GOP moderates in nearly every region of the country, ranging from a former Midwestern congressman, Ray LaHood, who became transportation secretary, to Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who was recently named ambassador to China.[b]

Obama also made a play for two of the four remaining Northeastern Republican senators — meeting with success in the case of party-switching Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter and near-success in the case of New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, who initially accepted the president’s appointment as head of the Commerce Department before backing out.

And with McHugh’s appointment, Obama has managed to cut New York’s ever-shrinking GOP House delegation by one-third. The state delegation now includes just two Republicans in its 29-member contingent — down from 10 as recently as 2004.

Between high-profile conversions from the Northeast to the Midwest to the Rocky Mountain West — not to mention Obama’s warm relations with the nation’s two most prominent moderate Republican governors, California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florida’s Charlie Crist — it’s beginning to look like a strategy that isolates conservatives, reinforces the impression that the GOP is defined by the borders of the Deep South and all the while underscores Obama’s stated goal of working across party lines.
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“It’s very smart politically on a lot of levels. First, it’s a demonstration that he’s keeping his promise to govern in a bipartisan way. Second, the fact is, every time you open up a seat in the House or Senate that an incumbent Republican holds, you give your party an opportunity to win one back. And some of those seats may come our way,â€