Obama Waging Intense Stealth Campaign To Win GOP Support For Big-Ticket Leftist Programs

May 18, 2009 7 Comments ›› Pat Dollard

Politico:

President Barack Obama’s first date with House Republicans didn’t end so well: He made a high-profile trip to the Capitol to ask for their help with his economic stimulus plan, and they said no — unanimously, twice.

Now Obama is trying again — more quietly and with a smaller group of moderate Republicans who might be more willing to say yes. The goal: Try to get at least some Republicans to back big-ticket items such as Obama’s health care plan, but avoid the public spectacle of being rejected a second time around.

Rather than have the president, his motorcade and his press pool trek to Capitol Hill, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel last week invited about a dozen or so moderate House Republicans to meet with him in a small outdoor courtyard just off the West Wing.

According to members who attended, Emanuel acknowledged that even moderate Republicans might not support Obama’s health care plan in the end, but he said that the White House wanted to maintain an open dialogue throughout the process — and that some of their ideas might be included.

The president stopped by for about 15 minutes. He listened to the Republicans’ ideas for overhauling the health care system and agreed to review an energy bill authored, in part, by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.).
At least one Republican walked away impressed.

“I believe they’re making an honest and overt effort to deal with Republicans,” said Delaware Rep. Mike Castle. “The White House is genuinely interested in resolvable issues.”

Administration officials, including Emanuel, thought their efforts at bipartisanship during the stimulus debate at times got in the way of promoting the substance of the bill. Receiving such little Republican support on the stimulus was something of a wake-up call, and Obama’s advisers have since made clear that they’d prefer to move their priorities on health care and energy than win praise from process-obsessed Beltway types for being inclusive of the minority.

In his 100 days news conference late last month, Obama assured reporters that his outreach to Republicans “has been genuine.” But he quickly added a more politic version of his now-famous “I won” declaration from earlier this year.

“I can’t sort of define bipartisanship as simply being willing to accept certain theories of theirs that we tried for eight years and didn’t work and the American people voted to change,” Obama said.

Still, although Obama doesn’t need GOP support in the House, where a huge Democratic majority can move legislation over Republican objections, the president and his top aides know that Republican votes in the House can provide cover for Democrats there and may help curry GOP votes in the Senate.
There’s also the political benefit of looking bipartisan — an appearance that’s hard to keep up when House Republicans continue to vote en masse against your signature legislative efforts.

The Republicans also have an interest in the outreach. House Republican leaders — particularly Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) — have worked hard over the last month to shed the “party of no” label, constantly pushing the story line that Republicans have alternatives to the Democrats’ plans and talking the talk about wanting to work cooperatively with the president.

“I’m a big believer that more communication would help us bridge the gap,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said last week. “Open dialogue is helpful.”

But there is similar peril in compromise. Though Republicans can alienate swing voters by standing their ground, they can turn off their conservative base by moving toward the middle.

The roster at last week’s meeting was a usual-suspects collection of moderate Republicans, with Castle, Pennsylvania Reps. Charlie Dent and Jim Gerlach, Ohio Reps. Steve LaTourette and Patrick Tiberi, Michigan Reps. Candice Miller and Fred Upton and freshman New Jersey Rep. Leonard Lance, among others.

This was their second session, but last week’s meeting was much more productive than Round One, in which the Republicans felt as though they were invited to the White House more as props than as peers. This time, they were even served sandwiches — although no one ate because it was late in the day, Castle joked.

The talk was heavy on health care but touched other subjects, such as promised federal aid for domestic energy production and the flailing auto industry.

Tiberi expressed concern that the so-called cash-for-clunkers legislation — in which the federal government would pay car owners to trade in their older gas-guzzlers for newer models with higher fuel-efficiency standards — had gotten tied up in negotiations over a controversial climate-change bill.
But health care was the main subject — and remains the biggest hurdle.

Both sides are saying and doing everything possible to show a willingness to reach out to the other; Republican leaders sent Obama a letter last week promising to work with him on the overhaul. But the barriers to a compromise remain high. Most Democrats want the government to offer some form of expanded health insurance. Republicans fundamentally disagree. Similar fights should erupt over who will foot the enormous bill.

In the interim, a group of House Republicans gathered in Boehner’s Capitol office last week to discuss the party’s own priorities for health care reform promised to reach out to conservative Democrats in an effort to build their own unlikely coalition.

After last week’s White House meeting, moderate Republicans remained skeptical that the parties can come together on health care. But they were appreciative that the president is soliciting their ideas.

Murphy, who holds a Ph.D. in psychology and sits on a prominent health care subcommittee, encouraged the president and Emanuel to secure hundreds of billions in savings by ironing out redundancies in the current health care system. He also asked the president and his chief of staff to address funding shortfalls for preventative medicine.

The meeting, he said, “opened a door.”

Obama says the door has always been open.

“I’ve had them over to the White House more than they were over in the White House during the Bush administration,” Obama said to laughs last week from a friendly audience at a New Mexico town hall meeting. “That’s true. We have consulted with them extensively.”

Even Castle acknowledged that he never saw the courtyard where Emanuel hosted last week’s meeting during former President George W. Bush’s eight years in the White House.

“We’ve never stopped reaching out to the other side,” noted White House communications director Anita Dunn, saying the administration hoped for “as broad a coalition as possible” on forthcoming votes on health care, energy and financial regulation.

Still, she said, “at the end of the day, it’s up to congressional Republicans whether they want to work in a bipartisan manner or not.”