I watched President Obama's extraordinary Republican Caucus meeting yesterday from beginning to end...I was so impressed with our president, and not surprised by the attitude and behavior of the Repubs....but it was televised LIVE.
Obama Takes Questions From House GOPIn a remarkably sharp face-to-face confrontation, President Barack Obama chastised Republican lawmakers Friday for opposing him on taxes, health care and the economic stimulus, while they accused him in turn of brushing off their ideas and driving up the national debt.
The president and GOP House members took turns questioning and sometimes lecturing each other for more than an hour at a Republican gathering in Baltimore. The Republicans agreed to let TV cameras inside, resulting in an extended, point-by-point interchange that was almost unprecedented in U.S. politics, except perhaps during presidential debates.
With voters angry about partisanship and legislative logjams, both sides were eager to demonstrate they were ready to cooperate, resulting in the GOP invitation and Obama's acceptance. After polite introductions, however, Friday's exchange showed that Obama and the Republicans remain far apart on key issues, and neither side could resist the chance to challenge and even scold the other.
Obama said Republican lawmakers have attacked his health care overhaul so fiercely, "you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot." His proposals are mainstream, widely supported ideas, he said, and they deserve some GOP votes in Congress.
"I am not an ideologue," the president declared.
But Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., pointedly asked Obama: "What should we tell our constituents who know that Republicans have offered positive solutions" for health care, "and yet continue to hear out of the administration that we've offered nothing?"
Obama showed little sympathy, disputing Price's claim that a Republican plan would insure nearly all Americans without raising taxes.
"That's just not true," said Obama. He called such claims "boilerplate" meant to score political points.
When it was over, House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio issued a statement saying Obama "acknowledged the fact that House Republicans have offered better solutions over the last year."
Not exactly how the president and his allies saw it.
At the link, there's this post:
just got another ugly email from some I know, and I thought I'd share my response.
Give it up - did you SEE the televised meeting with the House GOP and the SOTU? Did you LISTEN? Real is real and this 4th grade sniping is part of the problem. We need to quit yelling neener-neener at each other through the fence and get to work on the problems this country is facing. Our President has my full support and I fail to see why Repubs would rather see the COUNTRY fail than work with a (GASP) black man (although that's not the wording I have seen used). Sitting on your hands and scowling is not what I expect from officials WE THE PEOPLE have elected, any pay handsomely, to work for the benefit of ALL OF US.
Sorry, but it bespeaks a level of ignorance to constantly work against your own best interests. The world we live in is constantly changing, clinging to the comfortable old ways isn't working - we didn't have _Al-Qaeda, jobs and manufacturing shipped overseas, a changing energy profile and a financial system on such shaky grounds in the 1950's. I wish life were simple, too - but it isn't. The old rigid, inflexible answers are quite simply inadequate in this day and age. We must work together to find new ways to survive and prosper. Feel free to forward this to your R friends who feed you this garbage.
