OFF MESSAGE:

'Obama Only Talks about Change': Justin Sayfie, a former top aide to Jeb Bush and a seasoned observer of the Republican party, talks to SPIEGEL ONLINE about why Obama's bipartisan efforts have failed and how the Republicans are reinventing themselves. (Der Spiegel, 2/16/09)

Justin Sayfie: I'm not sure whether Obama's bipartisan strategy was truly genuine. It's true, the president acted in a bipartisan manner -- he invited Republicans to talks in the Oval Office and organized bipartisan parties to watch football in the White House together. But his outreach was poisoned by the way the Democrats put together the stimulus bill in Congress. I can understand why Republicans feel that Obama only talks about change in Washington so far. There was simply not a lot of dialogue by congressional Democrats with Republicans in the run-up to the stimulus bill. The House and the Senate Democratic leadership were not as open to Republican suggestions as one might think from Obama's bipartisan gestures. The president would have received more Republican support if he had been successful in convincing his fellow Democrats in Congress to act in a more bipartisan way.

The Jeb team has obvious reasons for taking the UR down a peg, but for the broader GOP, at least for now, the better message is: We would have liked nothing better than to help the President pass his plan, but he's a captive of the Congressional Democrats and we needed his help to stop them from wrecking the bill. For whatever reason, he didn't think he was strong enough politically to get a clean bill past his own party.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 16, 2009 8:14 AM