President Obama for the first time appears to be making a full-fledged effort to extend an olive branch to congressional Republicans, dining with a group of GOP senators last week and penciling in a lunch date with House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan. His advisers are not pleased by the move, according to the National Journal’s Ron Fournier.
“This is a joke. We’re wasting the president’s time and ours,” a senior White House official told Fournier of the president’s outreach efforts. “I hope you all [in the media] are happy because we’re doing it for you.”
Another said that, if the president finds common ground with Republicans, “it won’t be because we had steaks and Merlot with a few senators.”
Former Obama aide Tommy Vietor echoed those remarks on Twitter: