Off the wire
Hong Kong stocks close higher by midday  • Urgent: 11 officials punished over Shanghai stampede  • (Sports Focus) Chinese billionaire buys 20% stake in Atletico Madrid (updated 1)  • Discipline violation of local officials at Shanghai stampede night  • (Sports Focus) Chinese billionaire buys 20% stake in Atletico Madrid  • Cambodian parliament officially recognizes opposition chief as minority leader  • China leads growth in foreign student numbers in New Zealand  • China now a net capital exporter: MOC  • Obama: New Iran sanctions will lead to "failure of diplomacy"  • Feature: French Muslims call for respect without abusing freedom of speech  
You are here:   Home

Obama seeks "common grounds" with GOP

Xinhua, January 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday calls for "better politics," vowing to find "common grounds" with the GOP.

"A better politics is one where we appeal to each other's basic decency instead of our basest fears," Obama said in his second-to-last State of the Union Address delivered at the Republican-controlled Congress.

The president said debates between his fellow Democrats and the GOP should be conducted "without demonizing each other," and they should not be "fake controversies that have nothing to do with people's daily lives."

During his sixth annual speech, the president also hints that there are common grounds on which the two parties may work together.

"Yes, passions still fly on immigration, but surely we can all see something of ourselves in the striving young students, and agree that no one benefits when a hardworking mom is taken from her child, and that it's possible to shape a law that upholds our tradition as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants," Obama said.

The president also noted that the two parties can "come together" to make voting easier for Americans and "to reform America's criminal justice system so that it protects and serves us all." Endi