Randi Rhodes: Obama Hosts GOP

Today President Obama met with Congressional leaders of both parties. I’d call it a “summit,” but it involves stooping to the level of people like the Republican leadership. Today’s meeting will include John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, and Jon Kyl. How would you like to be in the same room as that bunch? Throw in a rabid weasel, and I think it’s a nightmare I once had. I’d rather spend the night locked in a hotel room with Charlie Sheen.

This meeting is a reschedule. McConnell and Boehner said they couldn’t fit Obama in for the date he originally proposed in November. Maybe Obama should have told Boehner there were going to be cocktails. The White House had been trying to keep expectations for today’s meeting low. That shouldn’t be a problem. It is, after all, with Republicans. Just to make sure that low expectations could be met, Boehner and McConnell wrote an op-ed in today’s Washington Post called “Where we and Democrats can work together.” Basically, they say they can work together on dismantling the Democrats’ agenda. If this op-ed was meant to prepare the ground for today’s meeting, it was like preparing the ground by digging a grave for it.

It almost seems that President Obama is trying to find common ground with the Republicans by adopting their worst ideas. Yesterday President Obama announced a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers. Given the fact that most people’s wages are falling, they should probably be relieved that it’s just a freeze. But is that really the way to get the economy back on track—to hold back the incomes of fairly compensated people until they’re on a par with the people who are being taken the most advantage of? The Republicans were talking about instituting just such a freeze when they take over Congress. Message to the President—beating somebody to the punch doesn’t mean punching yourself before they can. Some pundits say Obama is trying to get out ahead of the Republicans. The problem with that is that they’re going in the wrong direction! Of course, maybe he knows something I don’t. Maybe Obama is making a gesture to the Republicans. But I think I know what gesture they’re going to give him in return.

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