Worth Noting, Whom Obama Listens To
Wednesday, June 10, 2009An entertaining and looks-pretty-much-right post from Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic about Washington politics, “The Six Republicans Obama Listens To.”
Regardless of whether the President’s bipartisan outreach is producing legislative results, there is a handful of conservatives and Republicans that the president and his White House team respect. By respect, I mean, quite simply, the degree to which the White House responds to their worries and needs and believes that the time spent responding is useful and necessary. It is unclear whether the quality of this outreach differs from the respect accorded to Sen. Ben Nelson by the Bush White House.
Ambinder cites Sens. Collins and Snowe of Maine, Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, columnist David Brooks, and Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith. Rahm Emmanuel is frequent caller to Brooks, eh?
And there’s the rest of the class, NAM included.
Others: Sen. Chuck Grassley, on budget and health care matters, as well as government operations; Sen. Orrin Hatch on health care; Sen. Mel Martinez on immigration; Govs. Schwarzenegger and Crist on policy matters, the environment and the stimulus; George Will; the National Association of Manufacturers (much more bipartisan recently) on labor and taxes; Sen. Lindsey Graham on detainee issues; Sen. Judd Gregg (still); what of Charles Krauthammer, who dined with Obama pre-inaugural? He’s read…but not influential.
Wonder what Ambinder’s original list looked like. The url for his post gives an indication of his having planned a different commentary.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/06/the_five_conservatives_obama_listens_to.php
P.S. We do the same thing all the time. You could probably find 20 posts on the blog that are on a different topic than the url indicates.