ALIENATING THE BASE IS THE POINT:

As Obama Seeks Republican Votes, Worry on His Left: Liberal Groups Scramble to Preserve Their Pieces of the Stimulus Bill (RICK KLEIN, Feb. 3, 2009 , ABC News)

President Obama's courtship of the right is beginning to worry some friends on the left.

As the Obama administration seeks ways to streamline his stimulus plan to appeal to Republican lawmakers, the president risks alienating key allies in his liberal base.

A range of interest groups are aggressively making the case that favored projects and programs deserve funding as part of the stimulus plan, even while the president and his aides scour the package for items they can eliminate.

With public scrutiny growing on a handful of areas that congressional Democrats are seeking to fund, groups are increasingly concerned that the $800 billion-plus stimulus package represents what might be the last best chance to see their priorities addressed.

"In my judgment, [the push for funding] is as important as an election campaign," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

And the interest groups will lose their pushes because there's another election campaign in 4 years. Mr. Obama needs to preserve the public's image of him as a man of the middle.

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Obama Stimulus Plan Faces Changes in Senate (Michael D. Shear and Shailagh Murray, 2/03/09, Washington Post)

[T]wo Democratic sources with knowledge of the meeting said the president took a blunt tone with the lawmakers, urging them to drop whatever needs to be cut from the bill to gain bipartisan support and to pass Congress soon.
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One source said Obama appeared to be frustrated by the public perception that the recovery bill was becoming laden with partisan pet projects.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 3, 2009 10:16 AM