My hunch is that some right wing Republicans in the US calculated a while ago that Obama’s most exploitable weakness was his belief in negotiation and fair compromise. So they set out with the full intention of pushing him to the limit to see what they could get, either in more items on their agenda or in portraying him as weak, or hopefully (in their eyes), both. Willingness to negotiate is often seen as weakness by those that see the world in black and white, and themselves as pragmatists. Instead it is a strength, and an essential skill in conflict resolution.  I hope it seriously backfires on them, and sooner rather than later.

And just a note not entirely unrelated: look at this jaw-dropping quote from the Bush years ‘We create our own reality’.