John Boehner’s presser, in which he makes it clear that it was “President Lame Duck” who attempted to pull the rug out from under the Legislative Branch.
So it’s the Congress that will have to work this out, and it’s a shame that Obama is wasting more time today by “summoning” legislators to the White House. And, like Charles Krauthammer, I find that whole notion distasteful in the extreme.
[wpvideo 3tmsyRCE]
The video ran last night at The Right Scoop, which also has some good analysis, and got ‘Lanched. Also, Jazz Shaw remarks at Hot Air that the President’s own presser last night made him look like he was in a “snit.”
Sarah Palin is right; the leadership vacuum is extreme right now.
Also included in the Instalanche was Andrew Malcolm’s writeup for the Los Angeles Times, which emphasizes the element of political kabuki:
Deficit reduction talks between the Obama White House and House Republicans broke down late Friday with Speaker John Boehner saying he was giving up for now and would focus further efforts on dealing with congressional Democrats.
With just 11 days left before the administration’s self-imposed Aug. 2 deadline for an agreement to cut spending and/or increase taxes, Boehner wrote his GOP caucus members: “In the end, we couldn’t connect.”
But, of course, it’s not the end to any budget talks. It’s just the beginning of weekend media talking about the heat-wave struggle with both sides building dramatic bona fides for their political bases.
In Washington negotiations, such seemingly abrupt steps are often designed more for internal consumption by caucus members. And both sides know this. . . .
Boehner is under intense pressure not to agree to any revenue increases (code word for taxes).
And if he appears to show public firmness now, it could help get his restive troops to swallow something distasteful later.
And the truth is, while the talks appear to focus only on the deficit now, politically the maneuvering and posturings are really more about setting up the other side for the 2012 election 473 days away.
The GOP wants to show the liberal Obama as pro-tax and stubbornly resistant to cutting spending and the $14.2-trillion national debt, up 35% since Obama took office. “The president just doesn’t want to do what needs to be done to solve our problems,” Boehner said Friday.
And Obama wants to portray Republicans as the party of rich people unreasonably resistant to increasing taxes paid by a wealthy minority. Talking to reporters late Friday, Obama sought to portray himself as the reasonable chief executive. “I’ve been left at the altar now a couple of times,” he complained.
The Democrat said talks had produced a near-deal that, if anything, was “unbalanced in the direction of not enough revenue.”
In an interview taped earlier for broadcast on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor” Friday evening, Boehner said they were never near a deal. He expressed frustration to guest host Laura Ingraham: “The House has passed its bill. We did our work. We passed our bill. The Senate hasn’t put a plan on the table. The president hasn’t put a plan on the table.”
He described the ongoing talks as “adult,” “polite” and “not tense.” But, Boehner added, “Everyone around the table is frustrated.”
He likened the negotiations to a meeting of intergalactic cultures: “It’s like two groups of people from two different planets who barely understand each other.”
Read the whole thing.
And then, there’s this:
Rocketman on July 23, 2011 at 1:27 pm said:
I thought Boehner’s presser was pretty darn good, but he’s not the smoothest speaker.
At one point he was really cooking with gas, so to speak, when he said(paraphrase), “What is at issue here is a conflict of our visions of America. The President believes in a big spending big government, with high taxes to support it…” But then instead of finishing the comparison, he nattered on about how folks stop him in Ohio when he’s home to complain about regulation getting in the way of them growing their businesses and creating more jobs.
Which is OK, if he would have finished the direct comparison first…
Look, he did good; especially considering the way the MBM will carefully edit Obama’s temper-tantrum of a presser that preceeded this one, in order to make him appear as good as possible.
It’s just too bad he’s not as smooth as Marco Rubio, or others that are better speakers.
bobby b on July 24, 2011 at 12:03 am said:
But in Boehner’s defense, in his last couple of press conferences, his lack of polish has caused him to come across as being very sincere and frustrated – you get the sense of someone stammering a bit as they try to decide how to tell the truth without actually saying “so we almost had a deal and then once again that lying piece of . . .. I mean, once again, he took back what we had agreed upon and said, oh, by the way, I’ll need an extra $400 billion in new taxes on top of the $800 billion. You got a problem with that?”
I think people are starting to get the idea that OB is essentially an amoral con man, while Boehner’s sort of a normal down-to-earth guy who, above all, is just puzzled at how OB can be the way he is.