It looks like House Republicans, for all their wildly inappropriate comparisons with pro-reform demonstrators in Iran, actually do have one parallel with the Islamic Republic.  But unfortunately for them, the parallel is not with the demonstrators–it’s with President Ahmadinejad.  Even more unfortunate (for them), the common trait they share is victimhood by President Obama’s stealth hardball politics.  Jonathan Chait of TNR explains:

The thing that people haven’t figured out about President Obama’s conduct of foreign policy is that it’s the same as his conduct of domestic policy. Obama believes in the power of negotiation and public dialogue to split his adversaries–Republicans at home, Islamists abroad–and strengthen his own position. Obama’s speech in Cairo to the Muslim world was simply the foreign analogue of his dealings with the GOP.

[. . .] by defusing the complaint among Islamists that the United States disrespects their religion, Obama can more easily force the Iranian leadership to negotiate on the terms of its stated goals. This is actually “a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers,” as American Prospect editor Mark Schmitt wrote in 2007. “One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in,” Schmitt explained, “treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem.”

The common mistake Obama’s adversaries make, Chait argues, is that they treat his Chicago-learned hardball political tactics and his post-partisan ideology separately.  ”[But] in reality,” Chait concludes, “it’s all the same thing.  Obama’s defining political trait is the belief that conciliatory is a ruthless strategy.”

Popularity: 1% [?]