"There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted

[pampango]

to get done, just because the president wanted to do it," Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) admitted on Tuesday in an interview with Digital First Media editors in the offices of the Times Herald newspaper in Norristown, Pa.

Rachel Maddow:

I think the senator's candor is important for a couple of key reasons. The first, of course, is that it puts the debate over gun reforms in a fresh light. You'll recall that two weeks ago, much of the political commentary surrounding the Senate vote focused on holding President Obama responsible -- he didn't "twist arms" enough; he didn't "lead" enough; he didn't act like an Aaron Sorkin character enough. Blame the White House, we were told, for Republican intransigence.

According to Toomey -- who presumably has a pretty good sense of the motivations of his own colleagues in his own party -- the media's blame game had it backwards. No amount of presidential arm-twisting can overcome the will of lawmakers who want to defeat the president's agenda because it's the president's agenda.

... Republican policymakers are post-policy, that the policy actually -- even some things that seem like constants don't actually a matter them, that it's pure politics, just positioning themselves vis-a-vis the president, and they're not actually invested in any particular outcome for the country.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/05/01/18001650-toomeys-candor-sheds-light-on-post-policy-party?lite

[MagickMuffin]

1. Why My My: What a SURPRISE!

Who knew ! !

[unblock]

2. not that i'm suggesting this, but at some point you gotta wonder:

would republicans oppose the president even if obama were to propose a tax cut for the rich?

remember that they opposed (and still oppose) obamacare even though it was thought up by a right-wing think tank and first enacted by rmoney as governor of massachusetts.

[frazzled]

3. "Post-policy": bingo

That is precisely it. They have absolutely no interest whatsoever in advancing any particular policy, even policy they themselves have proposed in the recent past ... it's just a power game for them, either against the president or for their own individual fortunes, political or financial.

We've entered the post-policy era. Let's not let our side fall down that same rabbit hole.