Anti-Obama brickbats from left as well as right

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Opposition to President Barack Obama from Republicans is being augmented by pushback from his own Democrats as he takes on some liberal sacred cows.

There is grumbling from Obama's left flank against tax proposals in his ambitious budget, against his plans for a new military offensive in Afghanistan and over his stance towards the trade union movement.

"He has the classic task of the reformer, to get enough momentum up to overcome the inertial resistance of the status quo," Brookings Institution analyst William Galston said, identifying resistance from both left and right.

Obama Tuesday targeted one of the most powerful constituencies in the sprawling Democratic coalition -- the teachers unions.

"It is time to start rewarding good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones," he said in a speech promising a world-class education system throughout the United States.

That raised the prospect of merit pay based on performance for better teachers, and dismissal for sub-par educators -- notions that have long been anathema to the National Education Association union.

Obama received scattered boos when he broached those ideas in a speech last year to the NEA, which with about 3.2 million members is the nation's biggest union for teachers.For the union movement as a whole, a critical test of Obama's intentions is looming as Congress starts debate on legislation designed to make it easier for workers to form union branches in their workplace.

Obama pledged last week to make the law a reality but it is encountering bitter resistance from employers and Republicans, who say its elimination of a secret ballot for would-be union members is an assault on democracy.

Several Democratic lawmakers also have misgivings about the "Employee Free Choice Act," as they do about Obama's 3.55-trillion-dollar budget proposal.

Ideas such as means-testing health care for richer retirees, and limiting tax deductions by higher-income earners -- potentially hurting charitable giving -- have emerged as bones of contention in the budget debate.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the objections were par for the course.

"I think most people that have seen budgets go from here to there are not surprised that different individuals with competing interests look at and see different parts of a budget -- some things they like and some things they don't like -- whether it's Democrats or Republicans," he said.

Senate budget committee chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, is balking at cuts of billions of dollars to government farming subsidies while also saying Obama's planned deficit reduction is too modest.

Chris Van Hollen, a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, said disputes over the budget were a sign of harder debates to come after Obama won narrow approval from Congress for his massive economic stimulus bill.

"There are a lot of items in the budget that would normally get a lot more attention, if we were in a normal year," Van Hollen told the Washington Post.

"They've been eclipsed by the tidal wave of the economy," he said, while adding: "They are waiting in the wings."

Then there are the growing noises of discontent over Obama's plans to send another 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, while leaving a sizeable residual force of up to 50,000 in Iraq.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have both expressed surprise at the 50,000 number as Obama tries to deliver on what is an article of faith for liberal Democrats -- ending the Iraq war.

A coalition of radical groups called ANSWER is planning an anti-war march March 21 on the Pentagon, arguing "President Obama has essentially agreed to continue the criminal occupation of Iraq indefinitely."

The president will not lose much sleep over the coalition's demands. But doubts about his Afghan strategy were crystallized in a Newsweek article bearing the cover-page headline of "Obama's Vietnam."

However, assailed by the right and needled by the left, Obama may just be in a political sweet spot. Half way through his first 100 days, opinion polls give the president a lofty job approval rating of more than 60 percent.

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