Obama Searching For a Key Victory

Obama Searching For a Key Victory

President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks about his proposed fiscal 2014 federal budget on April 10, 2013, in the Rose Garden of the White House.

Behind President Obama's strong policy offensives on a variety of fronts is a matter of growing urgency: He needs a major victory soon on at least one high-stakes issue or he risks sliding toward lame-duck status in his second term, political strategists say.

"The clout starts diminishing if he doesn't have some breakthrough on the big issues soon," says Ken Duberstein, former White House chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan.

This explains why Obama has been pushing so hard to win congressional passage of a deficit-reduction package, gun control legislation and a comprehensive immigration bill – three of his top priorities. Democratic advisers say he is probably at the high point of his influence now, only a few months after his re-election triumph, and this is the best time to win some Congressional victories.

Presidents tend to lose influence in their second terms as the political establishment and the country begin to focus on choosing their successors, but it usually doesn't happen until their final two years in office.

Obama hopes to avoid this fate by bending Congress to his will now and building on that success to keep fellow Democrats in control of the Senate and give them control of the House in the 2014 mid-term elections.

Obama released a 2014 budget blueprint Wednesday that showed his intense desire to find a "grand bargain" that would put the government on a path to major deficit reduction and put the economy on a path toward a strong recovery.

His proposals included provisions designed to court at least a few Congressional Republicans, who have stymied his agenda in the past. One such provision is to cut benefits for Social Security recipients in an effort to save money. This is causing a backlash among liberals who consider it a betrayal of the Democratic party's commitment to the elderly.

But Obama strategists argue that his top priority is to somehow bring balky GOP legislators to his side. Obama held a private dinner at the White House with a dozen GOP senators Wednesday night, his second such dinner with Republicans senators in recent weeks.

More News:

• Obama Plays Divide and Conquer With the GOP
• From Turmoil to Stability
• Poll: Voters Say Job Creation Is Priority 1

Why did daddy kill that girl? Backpacker murder suspect's wife tells of children's disbelief

Sarah Groves, 24, was stabbed 40 times in Kashmir on Saturday morning

Dutch national Richard de Wit has confessed to the brutal murder

Wife of de Wit says he had become 'increasingly paranoid and irrational'

De Wit abandoned wife and two children to go travelling six months ago.    

    

                                                                                                                                              

The wife of the Dutch tourist accused of murdering a British backpacker in India yesterday told how her children had asked her: ‘Why has daddy killed that woman?’
Thai bride Uma Rupanya said her husband of ten years, Richard de Wit, had become increasingly paranoid and psychotic before abandoning the family six months ago to go travelling.
The first she learned of her husband’s alleged crime was when Dutch officers arrived to tell her that de Wit, 43, had confessed to the murder of former public schoolgirl Sarah Groves, 24, on a houseboat.
Miss Groves, a fitness instructor from Guernsey, was stabbed 45 times in a frenzied 15-minute knife attack at Lake Dal, near Kashmir’s capital Srinagar.
Yesterday Miss Rupanya, who is blind in one eye and suffers from multiple sclerosis, said she does not know what to say to her two daughters, aged 12 and ten.
‘I want to protect them but don’t know how,’ she said.
Jobless de Wit, said to be 7ft tall, fled the murder scene in a stolen rowing boat, which capsized before he swam to shore.
He was arrested by police, dripping wet, with £2,000 stuffed in his underwear and wearing no shoes, 50 miles away.
According to Indian police, he later said he murdered Miss Groves after being taken over by the devil.
Yesterday, Miss Rupanya, 31, said she was in a state of shock and felt immense sorrow for Miss Groves’s family. She told the Daily Mail: ‘My husband left us in November. He was seeing a psychiatrist but had become increasingly irrational and paranoid.

 

More...

• 'We begged her not to go': Tears of Sarah's father as he reveals he pleaded with her to stay away from Indian houseboat where she was stabbed to death
• 'The devil took over my body'... says the 7ft Dutchman accused of stabbing to death 'wonderful' British tourist, 24, on Indian houseboat
• British backpacker fought desperately for her life as 'Dutch killer' knifed her 45 times, doctors reveal

‘He believed the Government was out to get him, that spies were following him, that the house was bugged.
‘He had stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication also.
'He said he had to leave for his and our safety. I was very worried about him but never expected something like this to happen.
‘It’s just so awful. He was a good father to our children, he was never violent towards me and he did not take drugs, although I have heard that he started to smoke cannabis after he left us.

‘I feel angry as he left me with a few thousands euros to live on, he knew I couldn’t work or provide for the children myself because of my disability. 

'I just have to try to be strong and be a good mother the best I can but it is a very dark time for us.

‘My children are very angry too. They ask me “why has daddy killed that woman?” I don’t know what to say. I want to protect them but don’t know how.’

De Wit, a former councillor for an extreme right-wing party in his home town of Ridderkerk, met his wife while on holiday in Thailand 13 years ago when he went into her brother’s clothes shop where she worked as a sales assistant.

They had their two daughters before marrying in November 2002.  At the time, Miss Rupanya was seriously ill after giving birth to their second child so the ceremony took place from her hospital bed in Rotterdam’s Erasmus Hospital.

Speaking from the tiny apartment they shared together in the town of Capelle aan den Ijssel, she said: ‘Richard never worked. He stayed at home and played on the computer. 

'At the weekend he would take our children to the museum.
‘After he left us, he would phone and email to see how we were. But I felt very let down.
‘The last time I spoke to him was two days before the murder. He seemed OK and said he was enjoying India. I still can’t believe this has happened.’
De Wit, who has two children from a previous relationship, posted a rambling video online shortly before he left for India detailing his delusional fears that the Dutch authorities were after him and were trying to frame him for a fictitious bomb plot.
He remains in custody in India.