Carney: Obama Does Not Want To Annihilate The GOP

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Press Secretary Jay Carney said Thursday that despite Speaker John Boehner’s assertion that President Obama wants to “annihilate” the Republican Party, that is not in fact the president’s goal.

“The President believes that a strong two-party system is the foundation of our democracy and looks forward to working with Republicans as well as Democrats to get things done,” Carney said at the daily press briefing. 

“Ours is not the only politics in the world that is contentious and appropriately so.  What he believes, however, is that we need to have spirited debates but not debates that paralyze us.  We need to compromise, not be absolutists, but agree that the call — that the need to act on behalf of the American people should compel us to make reasonable compromise while we stick to our principles.  And that’s the approach he’s taken since he entered the White House, and it’s the approach he intends to take in the second term.”

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