It probably happened right around the first 9 months of Obama's presidency.
When I first came into office, the head of the Senate Republicans said, 'my number one priority is making sure president Obama's a one-term president.' Now, after the election, either he will have succeeded in that goal or he will have failed at that goal."
- President Obama, interview on CBS' "60 Minutes," recorded on Sept. 12, 2012, and aired on Sept. 23
"It was no surprise, because the senator from Kentucky, who just spoke, announced at the beginning, four years ago, exactly what his strategy would be. He said, his number-one goal was to make sure that Barack Obama was a one-term president."
- Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), on the Senate floor, Sept. 21, 2012
"Ed Rendell, who has criticized the president (objecting, for example, to the Obama campaign's attack on private equity), also argues that Obama has been constrained by an unprecedented obduracy in his Republican opposition. 'I can't ever recall a newly elected president being faced with the leader of the other party's caucus saying "Our No. 1 priority is to make this president a one-term president,"' says Rendell, citing the remark made by Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, that exemplified the fierce partisanship that has attended Obama's tenure. 'That McConnell would say that in the first nine months of Barack Obama's tenure is absolutely stunning, disgraceful, disgusting - you name the term.'"
- Peter J. Boyer, writing in Newsweek, Sept. 10, 2012