Senate GOP to Obama: You don’t write, you don’t call

We’ve heard of “nerd prom,” the ever-more-questionable celebrity banquet staged by the White House press corps for the President and administration they’re supposed to be covering.  Maybe this is “nerd dating gone wrong,” or something:

Senate Republicans who shared laughs with President Obama over dinner at the Jefferson Hotel in March are grumbling there has since been little follow-through from him on deficit talks.
They say the White House has not set up a process for negotiating controversial reforms to Social Security, healthcare programs and the tax code, and that absence of basic organization has stalled negotiations.

“We’ve made no progress. None,” said a GOP senator who had dinner with President Obama earlier this year. “There’s no process in place. Right now we just have 20 Republican senators meeting and talking to themselves.”

In other words, it’s not enough for Senate Republicans to go out on one date.  They want to, er, go steady:

The lawmaker said Obama needs to sit down regularly with about five or six GOP senators to begin making substantial progress toward a deficit-reduction deal.

It’s easy to criticize the Senate Republicans for complaining about the obvious, but it’s the White House who made this a big PR push.  After the sequester disaster, Barack Obama wanted to be seen as accommodating and bipartisan, reaching out for the first time in years to his opposition — notably in the Senate, where it’s a minority, rather than the House.  They played up the dinner with Senate Republicans as a way to argue that any further opposition to Obama’s plans would be the fault of an obstructionist GOP.  Senate Republicans, who have little standing to propose their own agenda while Harry Reid controls the floor, are merely pointing out the threadbare nature of this PR stunt.

In the House, John Boehner doesn’t make any pretense about wanting to negotiate with Obama, which Politico casts as making Boehner weak:

Boehner is a laid-back guy. In the 15 years these reporters have covered him, he has rarely flashed a temper or gotten too worked up — even off the record — when people are trashing him or making his life difficult. He clearly likes power but doesn’t get the charge most others do about actually using it. He would much rather drink wine with members at night than twist their arms in the daytime.

This can make him look, well, weak. Or, at best, like a bystander in the House he runs.
We had an interesting exchange with him about his power and relationship with Obama that captured this.

Boehner said he hasn’t spoken a word of substance with Obama since the grand bargain collapsed in 2012.

We asked the speaker if he had talked to anyone in the White House in 2013. He paused for several seconds, looked over at two aides, and they all racked their brains. Former White House chief of staff Jack Lew had visited once, after he became treasury secretary. And Boehner said chief of staff Denis McDonough “has called a couple of times. I can’t think of any other.”

“That’s kind of weird, right?” we asked. “You’re the speaker of the House. He’s the president. He has not had a substantive conversation with you in 2013. That’s weird, on both ends. Have you called him?”

“No.”
“Why not? You’ve never called the president and said, ‘Let’s talk about immigration so when it hits the floor

… ‘ ”
“I’m busy trying to organize my own guys,” the speaker replied.
Think about this for a moment: The two most powerful men in the world’s most powerful country haven’t bothered to talk to each other about drones, immigration, debt, taxes or anything else for nearly five months. No wonder Washington is such a mess.

That doesn’t make Boehner look weak.  It makes him look realistic.  Obama burned him the last time Boehner went out on a limb to negotiate with the White House (the so-called “grand bargain”); now he wants to keep his efforts within his own power structure. That means the House can pass its own agenda, but more importantly, act as a check on Obama’s by forcing the Senate to deal with Republican bills.  That cuts Obama out of the loop, forces Harry Reid to take Boehner and the entire House GOP caucus into consideration on any legislation, and puts Boehner in position — quietly or otherwise — to act as a crossing guard for any initiative.

The only reason this isn’t more obvious is because Harry Reid can’t even get his own agenda through the Senate with a ten-seat majority.  Boehner has barely had to flex since the beginning of the year.  This position is a lot better for Boehner than trying to shoehorn Obama’s initiatives through the GOP caucus after an uneven negotiation. Unless Reid starts finding some talent for compromise and pushes the agenda back to the center, Boehner won’t have to lift a finger.

That might be helped by more effort from the White House with the Senate Republicans.  Originally I thought this song should be dedicated to those Republicans pining for a call from the White House, but now I think it might be better sung from the West Wing.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/28/senate-gop-to-obama-you-dont-write-you-dont-call/