Reader Brian sends in this gem and wonders if Obama should take these guys to a movie on the second date after they shared one enchanted evening:
“This is the first step that the president has made to really reach out and do like other presidents in the past — develop relationships and build trust. If they continue to do that, that’s how you set up to get something done.”
— Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), quoted by National Journal, on dinner with President Obama earlier this week.
I hope Barack won’t make Tom stay home on a Saturday staring into his bedazzled iPhone waiting for a “let’s hang out” text. Though I would advise Tom not to change his relationship status on Facebook quite yet.
Wildcat12
I think it says a lot about Inhofe that makes Coburn the MORE appealing of the 2 senators from that state where Oral Roberts created one of the ultimate grifts.
Baud
Obama made a bet with Biden that he could take out the ugliest person in the GOP and make him popular.
Todd
You gave me mental images of Tom stalking Barack’s page for clues that there might be someone else trying to horn in.
Todd
@Baud:
Full of Internet pop culture win.
shortstop
@Baud: The third baseman and I were sitting around the other night debating who’s the ugliest guy in the GOP. We had a number of contenders, but he settled on Cantor and I have to stay with Priebus.
MattF
“I’m sorry to tell you this, Tom, but even though his hand was on your thigh, he still thinks you’re a shithead.”
General Stuck
Dining with clowns is easy, managing the circus is hard.
PeakVT
If they continue to do that, that’s how you set up to get something done.
I’m calling bullshit. These dinner dates will change absolutely nothing because Tommy and the rest of the Repuke gang are either whackjobs or deathly afraid of being primaried. Even if a couple of them learn that Obama isn’t the second coming of Hugo X Castro, his policies are still too far to the left for them to accept.
c u n d gulag
Our political system is just an extension of Junior High School and High School.
Obama’s the cool black kid who just moved into the neighborhood (Ahem… 4 years ago – but that’s like yesterday for the Villagers), and he’s too cool for the school’s white kids, so they all hate him.
But a few of them have secret crushes on him, and/or wish they were as cool as he is, but can’t admit it – so they lash out at him, instead.
And Politico’s Mike Alien-eyes and Jim Vanderhei-vey are there, covering all of the juicy gossip for the school newspaper.
“Tiger Beat on the Potomac,” indeed!*
*h/t: The amazing Charles Pierce
Alex S.
Also, Matt Yglesias on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/309362730396164096
c u n d gulag
@General Stuck:
I am SOOO
stealingliberating that line!!!gelfling545
The President made the serious error of assuming the legislators were adults who knew their job and would do it just because it was the right thing to do. Lesson, apparently, learned.
Jay in Oregon
And the Village starts another round of pretending that the Republicans don’t HAAAAAAAAAAATE the black man in the White House, putting it on the President to come to Congress, hat in hand, to ask for the privilege of cleaning up 30 years of conservative fuckery*.
Mitch McConnell fucked up when he said publically, before Barack Obama spent a minute in Oval Office, that their goal is to make him a one-term President.
*Analysis of the optics of making the black President submit to a bunch of grumpy old white Senators will have to be outsourced to someone cleverer than I.
the lost puppy
So this is all he had to do to get universal health care passed, to let the Bush tax cuts expire? Invite them to dinner? That’s the magic formula after 4 years of being called a shiftless, worthless, Communosocialist n—-r?
A fucking chicken pot pie?
Fuck that guy with a rake.
WereBear
The Villagers should really get a neurological workup, because MY short-term memory recalls that President Obama used to have cocktail parties for the specific purpose of meet-n-greet on neutral ground.
And he got snubbed.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
It’s pretty pathetic, but Coburn has a point. Senators have enormous egos, and sometimes you just need to grease the wheels a little. It’s certainly advice that I’ve used in the past.
shortstop
@Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage): Please. Coburn would have a point if “This is the first step that the president has made to really reach out” weren’t a blatant, easily disprovable lie.
Maude
@WereBear:
They wouldn’t mention that would they? It doesn’t fit into the narrative.
FlipYrWhig
@shortstop: You’re both way off. No Louie Gohmert? No Mitch McConnell?
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
@shortstop: Of course he’s lying. It’s not like Obama’s not aware of this.
aimai
@Baud:
Priceless.
Jay C
Sorry, I’ll have to call BS on the Hon. Sen. Coburn and his crap: this quote just reads to me like so much inside-ball Villager crapola designed to provide the Republicans’ fluffers in the media (i.e. nearly all of them) with more excuses for the GOP’s extremism and mindless obstruction wrt virtually anything President Obama might propose.
Senatorial ego issues aside, the notion that the President’s “problem” on Capitol Hill is that he hasn’t bothered to go out of his way to make nicey-nice with the Senate Big Shots doesn’t pass the smell test. The Republicans are still operating under the principle that the only legislative “compromise” they will accept for just about any issue is complete adoption of their proposals. And that anything else is unacceptable.
And dinner-and-a-movie with Tom Coburn (or any other of his Senate pals) ain’t gonna change that dynamic…
Poopyman
@General Stuck: You quoting Boehner there?
mellowjohn
i forget who said it, but “the senate is made up of 100 people who think they should be president.”
Culture of Truth
They do have enormous egos, but they hate, hate Obama. And they’re morons.
handsmile
@shortstop:
Rickie Lee Jones’ “Ugly Man” was written for Dubya, but it really does apply to so many in the GOP. And I assume we’re only speaking of physical appearance; to distinguish between their moral ugliness is a task fit only for the greatest metaphysicians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeNjrGtw_Gw
Ugliness is no less subjective than beauty, of course, but I gotta go with Bobby Jindal. The man is utterly freakish.
http://www.amazon.com/Ugliness-Umberto-Eco/dp/0847837238
shortstop
@FlipYrWhig: They did make the semifinals, but not the last cut. I’m sorry, the judges’ decisions are final.
@Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage): Then Coburn doesn’t “have a point.” We’re not debating whether it’s good for a president to reach out to the opposition — of course it is. What happened here is that a massively unpopular GOP suddenly decided it needed to accept one of Obama’s many gestures and then lie about it being the first time he extended himself.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
From Politico
The article makes a point that the Obamas were doing something that neither the Clintons nor the 2nd Bushes had done. I won’t bother to cut’n’paste from the article almost exactly one year later, when Obama ended the parties after the charm offensive got him no house votes on stimulus and one (the LA guy who temporarily replaced Congressman Cash in the freezer)
And I’ll point out again what no Villager will: on their way to the fancy dinner that Obama paid for out of his own pocket, every single one of those moochers voted to filibuster his judicial nominee, because the NRA said so.
Mark S.
The GOP continues to transform itself into a big tent party:
A lot of people think Jeb is dumb, and he is, but I think he knows what side of the immigration debate will win in the primaries.
schrodinger's cat
Mr [email protected]
What do you have against girls? Teenage girls have far more sense these GOP senators and are definitely not as destructive. Compare them to some other group please.
Senyrodave
Gee, I can’t understand why President Obama doesn’t want o play nice with leaders of the party who have spent years trying to de-legitimize him and his presidency. They push the overtly racist birther narrative. They regularly insult his wife. Politically, they use the fillibuster to make it impossible to govern.
When I was in kindergarten I knew enough to stay away from people who disliked me.
shortstop
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
OT, I well recall photos of the freezer in question. I thought it was inexplicably hilarious — still do — that the only thing in there besides the swag was a box of organic Boca burgers. I’m snerking just thinking of it now.
shortstop
@Mark S.: On a serious note, we hoped the IL house vote on marriage equality would happen this week. It didn’t because we don’t have 60 yes votes yet. A few GOP reps from moderate suburban districts have shown signs of voting for it. If Brady goes down today, that’ll kill that. Not good.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I have a theory about Rove that sometimes he’s says shit just to see if he can get his Politico/NBC flunkies to dance along to his tune, i.e. “it was Democrats who rushed us in to the Iraq War!” I had the same thought as I watched Turtleman chortle as he said pretty much the same thing as Coburn, about time and I hope there’s more of it. I think Mr “My number one political goal…” was just laughing at how easy it was to make the little puppets scribble down what he, not they, knew is simple horseshit.
Jay C
@Senyrodave:
Yeah, but this is the U.S. Senate: they aren’t, as a rule, quite as mature…
Ted & Hellen
The president is too cool to use the bully pulpit (how quaint!) and also too cool to schmooze with the sociopaths on the other side (the are dorks and unworthy!)…just what is it that he is not too cool to do to promote and enable a progressive agenda?
Is there any accomplishment worth the possible compromising of his uber too cool for school cred?
Joke.
aimai
I think people are underestimating how boring and claustrophobic and second rate Washington High Society is when your party is not controlling the White House and all those glittering functions. I think that the Republican Senators sincerely hate Obama and wish to end his presidency disasterously. But I also think a huge component of their disgruntlement is seeing a star studded presidency with massive international and national glamorous pull basically happen just out of their reach–and when they are invited they know they are the party out of power who everyone hates. I think Obama could have courted each one of these guys seperately (and probably should ahve) but I think another reason he invited them all together is that they have probably taken a pact not to see him separately in case he seduces one away from the herd.
Hill Dweller
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The thin skinned careerists in the Village don’t give a shit about anything but maintaining their place in the DC social hierarchy.
Many of the Republicans who have gleefully filibustered the President’s judicial nominees called it unconstitutional during Dubya’s term. Hell, some were part of the gang of 14, formed solely to stop judicial filibusters. That quickly went out the window when the Kenyan socialist was sworn in.
Republicans are fascists. Everything they’ve done, from voter suppression to gerrymandering to filibustering to stacking the courts with corporate whores, has been an attempt to undermine the will of the people.
White Trash Liberal
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They know 99.99% of the time they can say whatever they want and the media will dutifully report it. They also know their core tribe will comment and disseminate whatever they say as the truth.
Further, because whatever the GOP says is reported as at least half of the objective truth, even if the Democrats push back with facts, they are guaranteed half the column to spin it their way.
If Carney pushed back on this canard by pointing to past efforts by Obama to wine and dine the opposition, Coburn could mention that those last times don’t count because the music was too loud and ethnic and Politico would sex it up to mean that Obama was trying to intimidate the Senate with hip hop.
socraticsilence
@Ted & Hellen:
Please name one example outside of Foreign Policy of the Bully Pulpit actually working to move legislators to vote for something they otherwise wouldn’t have- from any president in the last 100 years.
White Trash Liberal
@Ted & Hellen:
And here is an example of the tribe dutifully treating Coburn’s lies as truth. It’s amazing. Especially because this troll fancies itself an apostle of Reason, with his iron-clad gaydar and imsufferable intimations of Obama’s sinister purposes.
There’s a method of looking for the truth called Coherence. This means that some people look for truth only if it coheres to their already established beliefs. I would bet that the percentage of Americans that adopt the Coherent method is roughly 27%.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@aimai: I have always assumed that Olympia Snowe was offered everything short of renaming the state of Maine after her to switch parties, leave the Senate or at least not be a dick, and she joined in all but a handful of the record number of filibusters– a significant handful, but still just a handful. A lot of the delay in moving HCR came from sometimes embarrassing efforts to court her. After a year of her dithering, placing conditions that were met only to have her move the goal posts, she plaintively moaned that “we need to slow down When she retired due to excessive partisanship, she blamed Obama for not reaching out. (NPR called her a maverick, to me she always suggested a bunny rabbit, trembling and twitching under a bush). I always thought there was a dark and interesting story behind Judd Gregg’s acceptance and then rejection of Commerce, blackmail, a bribe, a horse’s head! Turns out Mitch McConnell (and Barbara Bush) called him up and said, effectively, “Dude! C’mon man. Be cool!” Gregg too then joined in every filibuster and talk radio talking point. Coburn is often referred to as one of the Senators Obama had a good across-the-aisle relationship with, through Lugar, another Obama friend who turned on Obama, and his own long record on nuclear weapons, when faced with a primary threat.
Obama’s not a backslapper like Biden or Bubba, and it has cost him. Bloomberg was very reluctant to re-endorse because Obama doesn’t make him feel five feet tall. But I think the portion of blame that falls is very small.
maya
For delicious photo ops a-poppin’ PBO should hold a BBQ out on the WH lawn for select senate repubs. Serve that good ol’ American staple watermelon for dessert. See if the f*ckers eat it.
mdblanche
You can’t expect Coburn to put out so soon.
@White Trash Liberal: Wired for Republicans as they say. For 30-40 years before Obama the Republicans were the party of power so this was a safe career strategy. The media and a lot of other people used to how it’s always been aren’t going to wake up until the GOP does too. I expect that will be too late to save the traditional media. For now they’re wired for the crazy and being dragged down along with it. And those demographic and social trends out there are probably an even bigger threat to the traditional media than they are to the Republicans.
GregB
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The buzz in NH ran along the lines of extra-marital swinger type activity.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: I don’t believe in grand conspiracies and secret shadowy groups running politics, but it almost seems as if (Burn Notice fans out there?) Management has told the Beltway they don’t have to run interference for John McCain anymore. Shep Smith makes Warmonger mad:
Tonal Crow
I hope Obama remembers Norquist’s maxim that bipartisanship is another term for date rape, because FSM knows Democrats have let Republicans rape them for decades on vague promises of cooperation. The latest example is Reid’s failure to invoke the Nuclear Option, which was immediately followed by several Republican filibusters, including of an entirely noncontroversial nominee to the D.C. Circuit.
Tonal Crow
@PeakVT:
Fixed.
1bb3
Obama sussed the GOP out from the get, but they keep running the same tired, uninspired play anyway (This time for sure!), cheered on by the Village. Five years on and they’re still with the “blame Obama” thang? It’s just tired, y’all. Time for the Obama Hate Cult to get some new material.
quannlace
Yup, forget about trying to do your actual job, it all comes down to having your ego stroked by the Prez.
Urza
I do believe you solved the entire problem that elected republicans have with Obama.
They feel jilted.
They act like a jilted lover. And why not, they’re used to getting what they want from good looking men all the time.
Just because they won’t admit they’re closeted homosexuals with a crush on the popular good looking black man doesn’t mean they can’t act it out.
Now if only Obama would stop putting out so easily when they whine.
Mark S.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Was McCain also joking when he said “We’re all Georgians now”? Maybe I’ve been wrong about the guy all along. I thought he was a dangerous fool who get us involved in a half dozen wars if he were president. But maybe he would have ushered in a new Pax America based on laughter.
Smiling Mortician
@Baud: Obama’s good. But I’m skeptical about his ability to make James O’Keefe attractive.
piratedan
Well BHO had to have a sit down to tell those yokels that the people lying to them and keeping them in mushroom mode are their own party leadership. Probably gave them instruction on how to view the government website pages for real information and all..
Keith G
It may seem like general stupidity, but as often as not one must play along with the institutional rituals and ceremonies (dancing the dance) that existed before you got there. It’s not a guaranteed success, but folks take notice if one doesn’t continually make the effort.
Yutsano
@Smiling Mortician: Fixing ugly from the inside is durn near impossible. And O’Keefe has a shit ton of ugly inside.
Ted & Hellen
You are describing BJ Bots. Thank you.
Jacel
Thank you, Jim Foolish Literalist, for remembering what I was trying to recall. I thought Obama had held weekly happy hours at the White House, with explicit invitations to the congress republicans. He did that for about a year, and the R’s snubbed him.
MomSense
Tom Coburn and then Sen. Obama actually teamed up to write and co-sponsor legislation that called for public disclosure of government contracts. It became law and as a result we all got to find out how much money we actually gave to Haliburton and other contractors during the Iraq War. It was called the Federal Funding and Accountability Act. So did Coburn forget that he knew and worked with Barack Obama??
BTW that bill passed unanimously.
dww44
@MomSense: @Jacel: this and other similar posts! I’ve been so angry with my teevee this week, including the hosts on ever liberal MSNBC, that did NOT contradict these assertions coming from Republicans that this was some sort of novel Obama behavior.
But, also, has the administration taken any pains to contradict these assertions, or does this diminish their efforts to reach accommodation with the opposition? Have to confess, I am NOT having good feelings about any of this.