Is Pres. Obama Running For The Republican Nomination?

Image via TheDailyBeast/Newsweek

Traditionally, it's always been a GOP thing to want to "make the Federal government small enough to drown it in a bathtub," so what the heck is something like this coming from Obama?  Over the weekend, the NYT reported:

President Obama on Friday announced an aggressive campaign to shrink the size of the federal government...
...Mr. Obama called on lawmakers to grant him broad new powers to propose mergers of agencies, which Congress would then have to approve or reject in an up-or-down vote.  If granted the authority, he said, he would begin pruning by folding the Small Business Administration and five other trade and business agencies into a single agency that would replace the Commerce Department.

It's one thing to get rid of government inefficiency, but when Obama starts talking about eliminating a department like Commerce, he starts sounding a lot less like Barack Obama and more like Ron Paul.  The Department of Commerce is more than a century old and has a pretty important job in today's world--according to Wikipedia:

The mission of the department is to "promote job creation and improved living standards for all Americans by creating an infrastructure that promotes economic growth, technological competitiveness, and sustainable development."

Sure, according to the NYT article, Obama wants to replace Commerce with another department, but ChicagoTribune.com reports:

White House budget official Jeffrey Zients told reporters the reorganization would fold together the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and other trade bodies now spread across Washington, giving businesses a single point of contact and ensuring federal spending goes further to boost exports.

Exports?  Exports of WHAT? America isn't exactly known for manufacturing things--at least not inside the US.  While it makes sense that encouraging exports might encourage job creation, there's still the problem of US companies preferring to pay folks in other countries less, rather than pay American workers a living wage.  So once again, Obama relies on the Republican rhetoric and ignore all the outsourcing that companies have been doing for decades.   Why not fix the current department in charge of job creation rather than spending all kinds of money to create a new one in charge of the same stuff? It really seems to me like he's just going after Republican votes with this. And it's not just me who feels like Obama sounds less like Obama and more like his Republican opponents.  Here's more from the NYT article:

Even his language was reminiscent of Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential front-runner, who says he would use his experience in business to make government more efficient.

Between keeping the prison at Guantanamo Bay open, using drones in countries we're not at war with, not supporting the #Occupy movement, and now wanting to cut the federal government, I feel like Obama needs to stop sounding like a Republican and start sounding like the guy America elected in 2008. It's like Dr. Jekyll got elected but Hyde ended up the incumbent.  Just what is in the water in Washington, anyway?

Drop a comment below and let us know what you think!