GOP Leadership To Obama: You Never Call, You Never Write…
GOP leaders have a new complaint about President Obama: He’s not reaching out to them nearly as much as he did earlier this year, when he road-tested his pledge of post-partisanship, only to get uniformly rebuffed on his first big legislative initiative.
Here’s GOP Rep. Eric Cantor, giving voice to the new GOP gripe:
GOP leaders complain that the phone calls and White House invitations have slacked off - perhaps because Obama’s early efforts to woo Republicans yielded few votes.
“I think that in the beginning they seemed a lot more willing to go in and engage with us,” said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor.
I asked Cantor spokesperson Joe Pounder if this was the real view of House GOP leaders. He argued that while Obama engaged at the outset - watching the Super Bowl with GOPs, for instance - there were now multiple cases where Republicans had been snubbed.
For instance, Pounder said, the White House has not responded to the House GOP proposal for $375 billion in budgetary savings for the next five years. What’s more, Pounder continued, Obama has met only with Democrats on several recent occasions.
Of course, Democrats respond that Obama’s initial outreach efforts weren’t exactly reciprocated. House Republicans unanimously opposed his stimulus and his budget, and almost all of them opposed the big war spending bill. Many refused to condemn Rush Limbaugh for saying he hopes Obama fails.
On health care, a leading Republican - Senator Chuck Grassley - keeps raising the bar for what will count as “bipartisanship” from Dems. He recently suggested that a health care bill wouldn’t be truly bipartisan unless it didn’t contain any public insurance option, and also suggested it wouldn’t count as bipartisan unless it has lots of GOP support.
Of course, there’s still hope. Maybe if Obama invites Republicans to watch the All Star Game, they’ll drop their opposition to his agenda…
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Update: The DCCC takes a whack: “Rather than be part of bipartisan solutions, Congressional Republicans have been content to sit on the sidelines saying no and whining. Polling shows the American people are tired of the Republican Party of No banking on failure instead of working with President Obama and Congressional Democrats to move our country forward.”
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Well, Obama won't be able to invite them to watch the All Star Game, since he's throwing out the first pitch and all.....just sayin'. Btw, I think we're in need some some WAAHHHMBULANCE pics for this.