(Jake Turcotte)
Eating with the enemy? Obama has dinner with conservatives (gasp)
By Jimmy Orr | 01.14.09
If Shaggy from Scooby Doo were a White House reporter perhaps “Zoinks!” would be in his write-up after he found out what Barack Obama did last night.
After all, the President-elect decided to hang out with conservative columnists. In fact, he had dinner over at George Will’s house.
Pretty nice digs too. This ain’t no double-wide with a rusted Camaro on blocks in the front yard. According to real estate site Zillow, Will’s house is worth a cool $1.9 million. (Had he sold his house back in 2005, however, he could have gotten $2.8 mil for it).
Times are tough for everyone.
Guests
Who was on the guest list?
The New York Times’s David Brooks, the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer, CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow, National Review’s Rich Lowry, and the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol.
No Joe the Plumber? No. He’s over in Israel covering a war.
What happened
Controversial? Not really. Although the filer of the pool report thought those on the left might touch the lunatic fringe with the news.
Says New York Daily News’s Ken Bazinet, “This is for real, folks. The bloggers are going to love this.”
Yawn
There doesn’t seem to be any hysteria in blog-land. Barack Obama has reached out to the other side before. Who would have thought he would appear on Bill O’Reilly’s show during the campaign?
From what we’ve found, most on the left have more of a “who cares?” attitude about the event.
From the Daily Kos:
“We’re really supposed to be outraged about this or something? Why wouldn’t he talk to conservative writers? It’s not as if he shied away from the other side during the campaign, even going on Bill O’Reilly to get yelled at by that old gasbag. Let him try to work his charm with that crowd. There’s little downside. ”
Nothin’ good
Maybe, maybe not. Matthew Rothschild over at the Progressive seems to be one of the few who’s a little bent out of shape over the dinner.
“Nothing good can come from this,” writes Rothschild. “While David Brooks is a bit of a milk toast, George Will is not to be trifled with, and to the extent that Obama cares what he says, that’s bad news for progressives. Charles Krauthammer is a neocon through and through, and a mean one at that.
“And as for Bill Kristol, he of the Project for a New American Century and the Weekly Standard, this man is about as loathsome as they come,” he fumes.
Dittoheads
The thing that got a lot of traction last night was a rumor that Rush Limbaugh also attended.
Writes AllahPundit over at HotAir, “Is this happening? The One’s charm offensive is actually going to beat a path to the golden microphone? What’s next, drinks with Coulter?”
But it was all for naught. No Rush. No word of drinks with Ann Coulter.
Leaks
So what happened at the dinner?
Who knows? Obama’s people aren’t saying. And none of the attendees have written anything on their web sites this morning. We don’t even know what they ate.
We’re guessing details (even if they are cryptic) will emerge soon…
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2. Jo | 01.14.09
Way to go Obama.
It is a little harder to savage someone when you know them as a real, polite, and perfectly civil human being. It is time we became a civilized society again where political discourse is an exchange of ideas, not an exchange of insults.
Some will never give up their hostility and want to hold onto their belief that the enemy is really their fellow Americans who happen to vote differently. But most adults are tired of it, and want to see us working to really solve problems.
It may not last long, but at least for now I can sleep at night.
3. Neurobürger | 01.14.09
sure is funny that only two days after william kristol insultingly refers to obama as a “labradoodle” and insinuates (correctly enough it seems) that obama is nothing but a lapdog of the establishment (”continuity we can believe in”, nyt 1/11/09) obama goes BEGGING FOR TABLE SCRAPS (and maybe the “neocons” can continue to feign their outrage while the stealth neo-con of “change the corpos can believe in” continues to hand out billions to bankers
you’ve been NEOCONNED
enjoy!
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Jimmy Orr has worked in politics for the majority of his professional career working for two U.S. Senators, two Governors and one President. Most recently, Orr served as White House Spokesman and Internet Director for President George W. Bush and Special Advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger for Internet Communications.
David Cook is Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor and host of the Monitor's newsmaker breakfasts. He was the Monitor's editor from 1994 to 2001. Cook is a graduate of Principia College, served in the U.S. Army, was a Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and is a member of the Gridiron Club, Washington's oldest journalistic organization.
1. George | 01.14.09
I am all for it! BEAUTIFUL! That’s the way to do it. To be the President to all of the People. Open, honest, someone might question his methods? But you will see: No one will in couple of years question hios results?