In Do Not Ask What Good We Do, Robert Draper reports on a long dinner in which Republicans mapped out their campaign strategy against President Obama:
The dinner lasted nearly four hours. They parted company almost giddily. The Republicans had agreed on a way forward:
Go after Geithner…..Show united and unyielding opposition to the president’s economic policies….Begin attacking vulnerable Democrats on the airwaves.
This sounds unremarkable except for one thing: it took place on Inauguration Day, 2009. That’s how long the Obama honeymoon lasted: zero days. Most of the Republican leadership was dead set against compromising in any way from the very first day.
By now that’s not exactly news. But it certainly belies the Republican claim that they were willing to work with Obama but he simply never made the effort. They weren’t.
