Obama's Q&A with House Republicans

So, President Obama attended the House GOP's annual retreat. It was an open forum for the conservatives to question and grill him - on any subject, with no vetting. Republicans could bring any prepared statement, and the President answered them completely impromptu. It's quite a remarkable change from the previous administration, and a must-see for anyone who thinks that there's little or no difference between politicians and parties.

Before the meeting, the Republicans were "itching to grill the President". Instead of allowing this opportunity to be constructive, they tried throwing out false statements and their standard, hollow talking points. While this technique works well for controlled interviews and conservative media "reporting", their approach cannot stand up to the actual truth. When confronted with such propaganda, the President calmly answered all of the questions they presented to them, but also corrected them when they made false or misleading statements.

The meeting was also recorded, and afterwards, the Republicans took a different tone:

Barack Obama, for an hour and a half, was able to refute every single Republican talking point used against him on the major issues of the day. In essence, it was almost like a debate where he was front and center for the majority of it. As one Republican said: “It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.”

Sorry Republicans, one of the things of an open government that you'll have to deal with is that your constituents get to know what you're saying and how you're representing them. Clearly you don't perform well under such conditions.

thinkprogress.org
www.huffingtonpost.com
my.barackobama.com
www.thedailyshow.com

But really, it couldn't have been THAT bad for Republicans to actually have to face the President in a Q&A session, could it? Well, let's put it this way. Fox News cut away from the broadcast 20 minutes before it ended. That's how bad it was looking for Republicans.

mariopiperni.com/barack-obama/obama-lectures-republicans.php

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Obama's response to the group that is willing to sacrifice the good of America to achieve the political goal of making him look like a failure:

www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/29/obama.gop/index.html?hpt=T2

Good to know our President is an adult, even when faced with extreme political partisanship.