UPDATE: The White House just posted the transcript for the entire meeting.
As I mentioned in the morning open thread, Obama planned to attend the "Issues Conference" of the House GOP Caucus this afternoon. Well, he did. Fortunately for all of us, the parties agreed to allow live coverage of the meeting. CNN covered the whole session (as did MSNBC, although I saw on twitter that FOX cut away early.)
It was very, very compelling television. There's going to be a lot of buzz about this appearance today. I have to say, Obama owned it.
Obama gave opening remarks, then took questions from a lot of GOP Representatives (some of the really nasty ones) including Mike Pence (IN), Jason Chaffetz (UT), Jeb Hensarling (TX), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Tom Price (GA), and Peter Roshkam (IL) among others.
The GOPers asked pretty typical questions. Some of them tried to play "gotcha." Didn't work. Obama answered their questions and provided his own commentary on them. He called Republicans out for their attacks on him. He noted that they've pretty much called his health care plan a "Bolshevik plot." One of the best moments was when Obama dissed Hensarling's question as a recitation of talking points. (UPDATED: Here with Obama's response to Hensarling, which I got from the WH transcript:
Jeb, with all due respect, I've just got to take this last question as an example of how it's very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work that we're going to do, because the whole question was structured as a talking point for running a campaign.Towards the end, Obama pointed to GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who was sitting in the front row. He noted that when many of the GOP Representatives stand on the House floor to talk issues, Luntz "has already polled it" -- and they get the talking points from him on how to box Obama in. The President kept going back to the theme that the GOPers were in a constant attack mode -- and how that prevented them from being able to work with him.
Obama was impressive. He was on the offense and didn't back down. That's the President we need to see. He looked like a leader -- a very smart leader.
