President Obama recently attended the Republican House Conference where he took questions from republican house members. It was unprecedented for a president to go into the “lions (or gopher’s) den” and answer criticisms or concerns. It was a really exciting affair no matter if you’re republican or democrat. Here’s the full video and the question and answer session starts after his opening remarks at around time 20:00.
Pres. Obama, once again showed why people liked him to begin with. He is not only a policy wonk, he’s quick on his feet and the fact that he didn’t need a teleprompter, really refutes the republican argument against him.
In my opinion, if you listen to the republican’s questions they seem to be asking the same questions and throwing in talking points. They all seem to ask, “Don’t you know about our ideas?”. The issue is that we do know about their ideas. Their ideas are just ideas if they can’t offer ways on how to implement them. I think republicans have a few good and basic ideas. For example, tort-reform and insurance across state lines. But, as a whole, they are unwilling to compromise, they fight back with slogans and sound bites like “death panels” or “socialism”, which gets us no where. Case in point was when Rep. Jeb Hensarling gave a loaded talking point, which will most likely be used during the campaign. Nonetheless, Pres. Obama slams him,
I think the GOP knew this was a mistake to even have this question and answer session. Pres. Obama was able to breakdown all the republican talking points and future campaign slogans. He looked like an adult while the house republicans looked like whiny kids. Here’s Luke Russert reporting that a house republican told him that he thought letting the cameras in the conference was a mistake,
Other proof of this might be the fact that republican news network, Fox News, cut out of Pres. Obama’s Q&A just to attack him.
It’s pretty obvious that Pres. Obama came out looking good, I mean…he only had the facts on his side! But no matter what side of the aisle you support, one must admit this was a spectacle that our democracy needs more of. Not only is it informative, because the republicans did get their points across even though Pres. Obama pretty much refuted them, but it’s a debate that was fun to watch. All I know is that it has been a great few days for democrats, first the State of the Union (which was awesome) but now, this (which is more awesome). What more could we ask for? Now lets get back to business.


































