Trippi: GOP trying to turn Obama into another Jimmy Carter

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A prominent Democratic strategist said Sunday that Republicans are trying to turn President Barack Obama’s administration into another “failed presidency” like that of former Democratic president Jimmy Carter.

“They’re going to keep gunning,” Democratic strategist Joe Trippi said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, referring to conservatives’ recent - and ultimately successful efforts - to target Obama’s green jobs adviser Van Jones over controversial comments he made before becoming a part of Obama’s White House team.

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“This administration has the potential to be FDR or Jimmy Carter and I think the Republicans are going to do everything they can to make him Jimmy Carter, to create a failed presidency. That’s, unfortunately, what many of them want.”

Trippi, who served as the campaign manager for Gov. Howard Dean’s bid for the White House, also said he believed that Obama was genuinely interested in bipartisanship but that Republicans are not likely to respond to Obama’s efforts to reach across the aisle.

Obama has to “realize he’s sticking his hand out but many Republicans are just not ready to embrace it,” Trippi told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King.

Republican strategist Ed Rollins disagreed with Trippi’s assessment of Obama’s relationship with the GOP.

“Presidents don’t come down by what the opposition party [does] and that’s what we are, we’re an opposition party,” Rollins said on State of the Union, “There are many things that Obama is offering that we don’t believe in, so why should we compromise on our principles? [Democrats] have got all the votes, you can do whatever you want.”

Rollins also said that Jones was right to resign from his post as an Obama adviser.

“When you embarrass the president as [Jones did] and become part of the focus, . . . he did the right thing, he got out of there.”