Posted on 01/14/2009 9:47:56 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Conservatives sworn to dinner secrecy By: Jonathan Martin January 14, 2009 12:40 PM EST
Call it a charm offensive or a high-level “Listening Tour,” but Barack Obama is already signaling that he intends to break with the current president in one obvious way: hearing from his critics.
Obama Tuesday night trekked to the Chevy Chase, Md., home of conservative columnist George F. Will to talk politics and get to know some of his fiercest intellectual adversaries: Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Larry Kudlow, David Brooks, Rich Lowry, Peggy Noonan, Michael Barone, and Paul Gigot.
The two-and-half-hour dinner, which came at Will’s request, is only the first get-together between the president-elect and Washington’s opinion-makers. Wednesday morning he met with prominent columnists and liberal commentators, including the New York Times’ Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd and the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne.
The right-leaning attendees were largely mum over what was discussed over the lamb chops at Will’s table, pledging fealty to off-the-record ground rules and hoping that the Democrat may again extend an olive branch if he knows his company can keep confidence. They were Obama’s ground rules, but Will swore his guests to secrecy.
“You can’t have these kinds of meetings if everybody reports on them,” said one attendee, who suggested that President Bush may have received more sympathy had he held similar session with liberal writers.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Fierce. Hahaha. OH, that's a good one!
“Where is Kathleen Parker?”
She was underneath the table.
“...breaking with Bush by meeting with his critics”????
Good grief! One of the first meetings Bush had was with fat teddy.
I hate the msm.
Main topic of conversation, Sarah Palin’s lack of qualifications to run for president in three years on account of her kid’s, kid’s friends, kid’s friends relatives, their relatives and Palin’s dastardly connection to the midget lobby.
No, he’s not defining what is a conservative, he’s persuading those who can easily be persuaded. Many of those on the list voted for him last November anyway, so he’s largely wasting his time. These “conservatives” try to define what conservatism is every time they pen some stupid and insipid article.
It seems to me that most Freepers are RINO/CINOs. It was practically yesterday that this board was furiously supporting a liberal for president. Some of the people at the dinner party were critical of your beloved McCain and caught holy hell for it. So after all this you are going to blast them for merely meeting with O? All I see here is irrationality.
Impolite people might say that looks strangely conspiratorial.
And we should run an ad in DC calling them sniveling water-boys for the Marxist anti-American, Hussein.
‘My’ beloved McCain? LMAO. You don’t know me very well, do you?
LOL!!
Was Kristol Brook’s date?
We will see. If they start writing puff pieces for Bambi, they are toast. A few of them already have and I don’t read them anymore..nor do I care what they have to say on anything....lol
So, Peggy Noonan was there. No mention of knee-pads, though...
I saw a lot of Palin haters and Rinos on the lisWilliam Kristol was on the list and he was the person who first publicly floated the idea of Sarah Palin for VP nominee.
Sarah Palin hater? More like her BFF.
Obama is pretty shrewd. All he is doing is causing even a 10-20% reduction in the harshness of articles from the so called conservative establishment. Thinking someone isn’t “all that bad” automatically (and even subconsciously) makes you have less venom.
Only a liberal could pull this off though. It never works for a conservative ( or someone the libs perceive as conservative), and the silliness of McCain, and the Bushes is that, deep down, they wanted the MSM to like them.
I don’t think he knows too many of us very well.
Most everyone I talked to on FR was resigned to supporting McCain because he was the lesser of two evils - not because he was “beloved” by us.
Remember when the movie about JFK came out a number of years back? Bush had a private viewing and invited Teddy.
Rush was in Washington yesterday for somethign he couldn’t talk about. Jason Lewis filled in. He was supposed to talk about what it was today.
Could this event have been it?
Have you ever heard of the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils? BTW—Isn’t that what we do most of the time inside the voting booth?
Of course John McCain is a RINO. But BHO is a freaking Marxist.
I would have voted Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter if I was old enough in 1976. I did volunteer for RR in the primaries back then.
Last year I actually voted for Mitt Romney in the primary and Sarah Palin in the general.
LLS
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