Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Obama’s just now starting to call rank-and-file Republicans?

Obama’s just now starting to call rank-and-file Republicans?

"‘After more than two years of failed negotiations with GOP leaders,’ report Lori Montgomery and Rosalind Helderman, ‘President Obama is for the first time reaching out directly to rank-and-file Republicans who have expressed a willingness to strike a far-reaching budget deal that includes higher taxes.’

And that’s not all! ‘President Barack Obama has invited a group of Republican senators to the White House for dinner Wednesday evening, a source familiar with the event confirmed.’ And he’ll be joining Senate Republicans at their next lunch."

I don't get it. I would have done this 4 years ago. The way you come to agreements is to sit down and talk about the issues (not the ideology). I think the Republicans are wrong on many facts, there's no way to convince them if the press is the middleman. You sit down, you state your case, you listen (actually listen) to theirs, and then combine heads to see which solutions are better. It's not that hard. It's certainly not hard to try.

2 comments:

Karl said...

One might argue that as the executive, it isn't the president's place to get together rank-and-file legislators.

This other thing you describe - sitting down and talking about the issues - isn't that what the congress does (or is supposed to do)all day in their sessions - debate legislation?

Howard said...

You're right, but I'd argue, in our two party system, the president is the head of one of the parties so part of this job falls to him.

I get the practical part. You want to pass something (which he does). He's having problems negotiating directly with the opposition leadership, fine. One obvious way to get them to change their minds is to change their constituents minds (and they're also the presidents constituents). I guess that's what he's trying to do by giving speeches at various sites. But if you want to go directly to the people, I would have done that with a prime time TV address and a persuasive speech like Bill Clinton's convention speech.

He's has mixed success going to the people so it's reasonable to go to the rank and file GOP representatives. Still this all should have happened months ago.