Former President Barack Obama argued that Republican lawmakers were going along with “crazy” in order to advance their political priorities, comments that came as he has recently hit the campaign trail prior to the 2018 midterm elections.
“What you’re seeing is Republicans in Congress who are bending over backwards to try to shield and deflect oversight of this behavior and accountability and consequences,” Obama said Thursday at a rally for Ohio gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray. “This is serious. You know it is. And frankly even some of the Republicans know it is. They will say it, they just don’t do anything about it.”
Obama then said that Republicans had agreed to “put up with crazy” to accomplish priorities like tax reform and deregulation, and said the midterm races were an opportunity to “restore some sanity” to the political arena.
[Also read: Trump not expected to suffer election losses as bad as Obama, Clinton]
“This is not normal what we’re seeing. It is radical,” Obama said. “It is a vision that says that it’s more important for those who are in power to protect that power even when it hurts the country.”
Obama expressed similar sentiments last week where he attacked Trump by name — marking a first for the former president — and claimed that Trump was a “symptom, not the cause” of division being sown in American politics.
“What has happened to the Republican Party? Its central organizing principle in foreign policy was the fight against communism, and now they’re cozying up to the former head of the KGB,” Obama said last week, referencing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Obama also encouraged voters last week — even Republicans and evangelicals — to contemplate backing Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterm elections and that they should be concerned with the current trajectory of the Trump administration.
