President Obama went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with Senate Republicans. The President was seeking Republican support for legislation on energy, immigration and other issues. Reports in the Los Angeles Times and Politico indicated that the meeting did not go well.
While some Republicans said that the meeting was, at times, tense and testy, a White House spokesman said the meeting was "civil in tone".
It is hard to know exactly what happened; were the Republican too negative, was the President too partisan? According to Politico, "South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Obama is replicating the mistakes of George W. Bush, who had little regard for Senate Democrats’ complaints and routinely steamrolled them legislatively." Politico quoted Senator Graham:
"The pattern is they’re pretty good at reaching out when they need you, and when they don’t, they don’t mind running over you."
Perhaps most significant, however, is this from the Los Angeles Times:
"Evenmoderate GOP Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, one of the few Republicans who has been willing to work with the administration, emerged from the meeting with Obama with a sour attitude towardhis administration's record of outreach to Republicans like herself.
‘Their bipartisanship generally consists of "Can we have your vote for our bill,"’ said Snowe, one of the few Republicans to support Obama's economic stimulus bill last year.
If the President can’t even get Olympia Snowe, then there’s something wrong with his definition of "bipartisanship." And not much is going to get done before November – unless the Democrats can do it by themselves.
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