[Marxism] Obama kissy-face with Republicans

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Obama tries to seduce Republicans
By: Jonathan Martin
January 17, 2009 10:25 AM EST

It's no secret Barack Obama is trying to seduce Republicans these days. 
But his conservative courting runs much deeper and wider than is 
publicly known.

Obama has had meetings with his former opponent John McCain, GOP 
congressional leaders and some of the country’s leading conservative 
commentators. He’s also honoring McCain and Colin Powell in high-profile 
pre-inaugural dinners, where Obama is expected to toast the Republicans.

Behind the scenes, Obama and his team are working just as hard, courting 
prominent Republicans and conservatives through frequent phone calls, 
e-mails and private sit-downs.

The selection of evangelical pastor Rick Warren for the inaugural 
invocation and Obama’s dinner with right-of-center writers at George F. 
Will’s home drew significant buzz. But the transition also has quietly 
reached out to other prominent figures atop the Southern Baptist Church, 
Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministry and the Jewish Orthodox Union.

“I think he’s done an extremely good job so far,” said Sen. Richard Burr 
(R-N.C.), who received a call from the president-elect last week. “On 
both the quality of his nominees and the contact that he personally or 
his skeleton staff have had with members on the Hill — I think they’ve 
done just an exceptional job at that.”

Burr, who declined to share what he and Obama spoke about, said it helps 
to have one of the Senate’s own now in the White House, a rare thing in 
the modern presidency.

“One, you’ve got to understand that we’re friends. Two, the way he 
interacted with us as a member of the Senate — he hasn’t forgot that. In 
the early stages now he still has a cell phone and BlackBerry and he’s 
using them.”

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House Minority Whip, has met with Obama 
and is in frequent contact with Rahm Emanuel, the House member turned 
presidential chief of staff, via cell phone and BlackBerry.

“I have met with Rahm and spoken with him several times and he said, 
‘Look, you need to understand — working in a bipartisan manner is 
something the president-elect takes seriously,’” Cantor noted. “It has 
thus far been a very efficient process.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who just got back from the Middle East 
with Joe Biden, was with McCain and the president-elect in Chicago at 
the post-election meeting and met again with Obama Wednesday for about 
45 minutes.

“Once the campaign is over, to govern you have to find consensus and I 
think he understands that,” said Graham, who will introduce McCain at 
the tribute dinner Monday. “Ronald Reagan understood the value of 
personal relationships and I think [Obama] understands that that model 
offers the best hope of sustaining momentum from the election and 
achieving legislative success. So far, so good.”

Graham, one of McCain’s closest friends and a frequent campaign trail 
companion, said much of the good will from his party stems from a 
patriotic desire to turn the country around.

“A lot of people, including Republicans, want us to get back on our feet 
because we’re on our knees. And he’s the quarterback, he’s the captain – 
everybody is pulling for him.”

According to Obama officials, the president-elect has personally reached 
out to Senate GOP leaders, Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.), as 
well as key committee ranking members Charles Grassley (Iowa) and Judd 
Gregg (N.H.) and such moderates as Olympia Snowe (Maine).

Kyl, Gregg and Snowe were three of only six Senate Republicans who 
joined with most Democrats Thursday in opposing a resolution 
disapproving of Obama’s request to release the remaining bailout money.

Among Republicans, Obama seems to have made deeper inroads thus far in 
the more consensus-driven Senate, where he already has personal 
relationships from his four years there.

“I think he understands that 41 Republicans can affect what finds its 
way to his desk,” said Burr, alluding to the need to get 60 votes in the 
Senate for most bills to procede to a vote.

But Obama hasn’t necessarily shirked the more conservative House GOP 
minority.

Cantor said a hearing that Republicans held Thursday on the stimulus 
came after Obama call for more bipartisan cooperation in a meeting with 
Congressional leadership.

“He was very clear: he said bring us your ideas,” Cantor recalled. “I 
take the president-elect at his word that he really does want to change 
the way Washington works.”

Cantor said that, following the hearing, he and other House GOP leaders 
would approach Obama to request a meeting to offer their input on an 
economic bill that both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue hope to have to the 
White House by mid-February.

As generous as he was of Obama, who is riding high in the polls, Cantor 
was not as charitable toward his less popular Democratic colleagues.

“The battle of ideas is beginning,” Cantor said, just hours before House 
Democrats irked their Republican counterparts by unveiling the first 
draft of a stimulus plan. “Capitol Hill Democrats would rather see a 
return to addressing problems with a very significant amount of 
government spending.”

But while partisan clashing between the two parties may be inevitable, 
Obama isn’t limiting his outreach to the capital. He and his aides are 
also courting influential outside conservatives.

“It has certainly helped the president-elect to get more of a hearing 
from evangelicals when he invited Rick Warren,” said Richard Land, a 
well-known social conservative and chief of the Southern Baptist 
Convention’s public policy arm. “I don’t think that would have happened 
had Hillary Clinton been elected.”

Land, who said he had been contacted by Obama aides since the election, 
praised the new president and suggested that he would receive a fresher 
look from Christian conservatives because of both his approach and his 
generation.

“He’s done a pretty good job making it clear that he doesn’t have the 
knife out,” said Land. “Just because you disagree with him on some 
issues doesn’t mean you can’t agree with him on other issues.”

And Obama, unlike the Clintons and President Bush, is somebody who is 
neither shaped nor scarred by baby boomer battles, noted Land, 62, 
himself a product of the era.

“There’s more opportunity for it to be civil, more opportunity for it to 
be constructive. We’ve been going at each other for so long, we just 
can’t help it. But somebody like Obama comes along – an even though he’s 
more liberal than Hillary – he doesn’t generate the same heat. I welcome 
it.”

The message, said a transition official involved in the outreach, is 
simple: “The door is open.”

But, this being Washington politics, not all are convinced Obama’s 
motives are entirely altruistic.

Said Charles Krauthammer, the longtime conservative columnist who was at 
Will’s dinner, on Fox News: “You see that since his election he has kind 
of reached out to people that may not be ideological allies, to Rick 
Warren, the pastor who will be at his inaugural, to John McCain, whom he 
has treated with a lot of dignity and respect, and to a bunch of right 
wing columnists last night, in part, because I think he is a guy who is 
intellectually curious and wants to exchange ideas, but also in part he 
wants to co-opt the vast right wing conspiracy.”

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