 President Obama's meeting with Republicans two weeks ago has garnered a lot of attention from the Left. Progressives and Liberals seemingly can't get enough of telling us all how the President schooled Republicans. How he debated them into submission, and sent them running with their collective tails between their legs. Yeah, right. The truth is, a month ago before the Massachusetts Senate election, President Obama wasn't giving Republican lawmakers the time of day, much less a face to face meeting.
The political landscape changed overnight with the election of Republican Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts. It is also apparent that between twenty and forty seats in Congress will shift to the right this coming November, not to mention an untold number of Governorships. Rather than working toward a give and take with Republicans, Obama is, in fact laying the foundation of cooperation to enable his survival with the heavily Republican Congress he is about to face at the end of this year.
This was no meeting of reconciliation or compromise. Progressives do not compromise, they play for keeps, and Obama has always had a "my way, or the highway" approach to cooperation. This was a meeting of necessity, from a position of weakness, calculated to keep his foot in the door, and his badly damaged programs and agenda alive. When Pelosi and Reid are gone, as they surely will be, President Obama will find himself with no strong champions in Congress and a Supreme Court that he has managed to insult and disenfranchise.
By inviting the President to speak at their meeting, Republicans showed a commendable amount of benevolence. They gave Obama another photo op, with the appearance of "reaching out" for compromise and concession. They gave him the opportunity to continue looking tough and Presidential while scoring rhetoric points on the nightly news, and they gave him an additional opportunity to lie about giving consideration to Republican input and amendments to the health care bill. If you doubt that, check the Congressional record of proceedings. Republicans were essentially shut out of any meaningful participation.
Most pundits have explained the meeting as Obama's attempt to win back independents that have been abandoning his administration and its Progressive agenda for several months. Certainly he was trying to energize a besieged, weary Democratic Congress that is about to give up on legislation and concentrate on surviving the upcoming elections. However with his shaky coalition in the House and loss of the majority in the Senate, clearly the only reason Obama was talking to Republicans is because, now he has to.
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