In the midst of a heated political campaign season with four Republican candidates and two Democratic candidates vying for the White House, President Obama on Thursday said the media and the Republican “political elites” were to blame for the deeply polarizing race.
“One of my regrets is the degree to which polarization… has accelerated… over the course of the last seven and a half years,” Obama said of the changing political environment during his presidency. However, the U.S. president said that he is not the one that has been contributing to the polarization.
“Objectively, it’s fair to say that the Republican political elites” and the media “have been feeding the Republican base for the last 7 years [the] notion that everything I do is to be opposed” and that “cooperation or compromise is a betrayal,” Obama said.
While the president said he has done some “soul searching” to think about what has lead the United States to an environment of deep political polarization, he said that he is sure the “Republican crack up” that is currently underway in the GOP race to the White House is the product of years of divisiveness.
“Thoughtful conservatives” should take time to reflect on what has led to the “circus we’ve been seeing” in this GOP race, Obama said, adding “I want a serious, effective, Republican Party.”
When asked about Donald Trump’s candidacy, Obama said that Trump is just doing more of what has been done for the last seven or so years. There is not “a massive difference” between Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz’s policies, Obama said during a press conference with visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Obama pointed to Cruz and Rubio’s similarities in their harsh stances on immigration to Trump, saying that the two contenders hold those policy views though their families are “the products of immigration… the openness of our society.” Cruz and Rubio are both children of Cuban immigrant parents.