The Restraint of a Saint

So during a meeting between GOP senators and President Obama yesterday, Senator Bob Corker said the President has not been genuinely bipartisan and was using the Republicans as props.

“I felt like there was a degree of audacity in him being there today, after passing his third large partisan bill,” Corker told me, insisting Republicans had been stiff-armed by the Whte House on financial reform, health care, and the stimulus.

“I told him I felt like a prop afer the actions they had taken regarding bipartisanship,” Corker said. “It hit a nerve.”

Yet the President did not punch Corker out. Restraint of a saint, I say.

Sen. Pat Roberts told the media that the President should have taken a Valium before meeting with Republicans. But how do we know he didn’t? Very few men would not have jumped over the table to choke somebody under the same circumstances. The President either has the discipline of Gandhi, or he was heavily medicated.

Last night at a San Francisco fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer, the President hinted he was done playing Charlie Brown to the GOP’s Lucy with the football.

“The day has passed when I expected this to be a full partnership.” There is hardly any “room for cooperation” in the Republican Party, Obama said.

Do tell.