Obama to Republicans: ‘You can’t drive!’

By Faiz Shakir

From holding up nominees to proposing frivolous amendments and gumming up committee hearings, the Republicans have tried nearly any tactic they could conceive to block progressive reforms. Last night, President Obama delivered a pointed and sharp political critique of Republicans. Employing a variety of metaphors to describe the GOP’s strategy of obstruction, Obama first likened Republicans to fussy supervisors. “We’ve got our mops and our brooms out here and were cleaning stuff out and they’re sitting there saying, ‘Hold the broom better, that’s not how you mop.’ Don’t tell me how to mop!” Obama said. “Pick up a mop!” The president then compared Republicans to bad drivers who once drove the car into a ditch and now want the keys back:

OBAMA: After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want to keys back. No! You can’t drive! We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.

“You would have thought at a time of historic crisis that Republican leaders would have been more willing to help us find a way out of this mess,” Obama added. “Particularly since they created the mess.” Watch it: