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Uppity:

We’re talking about the immigration speech. How did that damn man in the White House manage to defy an election outcome in which Republicans liked to think they gave him a whuppin’? Why wasn’t he behaving like a loser, dammit?

It was a quiet meeting on the eve of a political explosion.

At 4 p.m. on Wednesday, 30 or so members of the 2012 GOP freshman class of the House of Representatives gathered in a conference room in the Capitol Visitors Center for what’s become a monthly conclave. For the junior representatives, this was a chance to get some face time with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Everyone knew that the next evening, Obama planned to deliver an in-your-face rebuke to Boehner, who’d warned the president not to “play with matches” and act on his own to suspend deportation of millions of immigrants.

All of those gathered had reason to be angry: Here was the president pretending, absurdly, that he hadn’t just had his butt whipped in the midterms, and defying the biggest GOP House majority-to-come in more than 80 years. …Politico

In other words, if the Republicans win the Senate in the midterms, that automatically also gives them, effectively, the power to nullify the president? Where do these naive members of Congress come from?

Politico goes on to report that the more flamboyant new Republican members have been persuaded, at least for now, to avoid the traps a seasoned, savvy White House sets for them. They may have learned a lesson or two from earlier government shutdowns engineered by a resentful GOP, shutdowns that voters didn’t like…

Call it thoughtfulness — or call it confusion. All in all, the mild, somewhat subdued response to Obama’s immigration move is evidence that the uncompromising GOP insurgency that so paralyzed Washington in 2013 has lost some potency. ….Politico

Instead of getting into yet more trouble over shutdowns, it looks as though Congressional Republicans may use up their anger on each other. Still, given half a chance, they’d love to punish that uppity president for shrugging off the midterms losses and doing his job.

Hysteria doesn’t seem to work against a relentlessly cool Barack Obama. So far, he hasn’t had to be wired for sound, or to depend on wadded up socks in his pants.

Cross posted from Prairie Weather

graphic via shutterstock.com