Reading The Audacity of Hope, I am struck by the frequency with which Obama tells stories of unnamed Republican lawmakers who come to him and privately admit that they or their party is being dishonest, is playing political games, or has ugly motives.

Page 84:

I thought back to an afternoon several years earlier, when as a member of the Illinois legislature I had argued for an amendment to include a mother’s health exemption in a Republican bill to ban partial-birth abortion*. The amendment failed on a party line vote, and afterward, I stepped into the hallway with one of my Republican colleagues. Without the amendment, I said, the law would be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional.
He turned to me and said it didn’t matter what amendment was attached — judges would do whatever they wanted to do anyway.
“It’s all politics,” he had said, turning to leave. “And right now we’ve got the votes.”

On page 130, we get one by the transitive property, as Karl Rove admits to an unnamed Senate Democrat they don’t want bipartisan consensus on their agenda:

“Make these changes,” the [unnamed Democratic] senator told [Karl] Rove, “and not only will I vote for the bill, but I guarantee you’ll get seventy votes out of the Senate.”
“We don’t want seventy votes,” Rove reportedly replied. “We want fifty-one.”

Page 209:

One Republican colleague of mine in the state senate provided me with a blunt explanation of their strategy [to bring Alan Keyes in as Obama’s opponent]. “We got our own Harvard-educated conservative black guy to go up against the Harvard-educated liberal black guy. He may not win, but he can knock that halo off your head.”

Page 265-266:

On the floor of the Senate one day, I caught up with one of my Republican colleagues who had leveled this charge [that Obama wanted to pay foreign guest workers more than U.S. workers] at me. I explained that the bill would actually protect U.S. workers, since employers would have no incentive to hire guest workers if they had to pay the same wages they paid U.S. workers. The Republican colleague, who had been quite vocal in his opposition to any bill that would legalize the status of any undocumented immigrants, shook his head.
“My small business guys are still going to hire immigrants,” he said. “All your amendment does is make them pay more for their help.”
“But why would they hire immigrants over U.S. workers if they cost the same?” I asked him.
He smiled. “‘Cause let’s face it, Barack. These Mexicans are just willing to work harder than Americans do.”

Amazing how Republican legislators always let down their guard and confess their sins, revealing their impure and base motives — and even trash the American workforce, and their own constituents! — when they’re in the private presence of Barack Obama.

It’s like he’s the Messiah or something.

* No word on whether the amendment laid out a position for when the mother is “feeling blue.”