Obama's Next Fail: The Charm Offensive

Rick Wilson at Ricochet explains why Obama's recent outreach to the GOP, dubbed by the wags as a "charm offensive",  is perceived by the GOP as more offensive than charming:

It's as if the White House and Obama's political team believes Republicans will simply ignore four years of being cast as racist, sexist, bigoted, evildoers imbued with a hatred of the poor and who run on a national platform of strangling kittens and mandatory pre-school waterboarding.

His constant campaigning and reflexive demagoguery doesn't feel like leadership...it feels like some kind of deeply embedded revanchism....

So you'll pardon the GOP's hesitation to leap into Barack's arms and go riding off into the sunset. His contempt for bipartisanship, his heavy-handed style and his disinterest in viewpoints even slightly at variance with his own aren't going to be fixed with a few dinners and visits to the Hill.

There is nothing in Obama's history that even hints that he's acting in good faith, and that the moment the GOP rolls over that he won't continue his partisan abuse. He can barely bring himself to pretend otherwise.

At best, his contemptuous sense of entitlement and superiority steps on any attempt at bipartisan reconciliation.

At worst, it's Ike Turner banging on Tina's door, promising he'll be better this time.


But even senior White House officials are having none of it:

“This is a joke. We’re wasting the president’s time and ours..."


So you can pardon the GOP for not wasting theirs.  And for not stepping back in the room with a serial abuser...