For more than four hours, a confederacy of Republicans assembled in the Caucus Room, an upscale restaurant in D.C., only hours after Barack Obama’s inauguration, plotting ways in which to immediately begin undermining his presidency.
This meeting included such senior politicos of the GOP as House members Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions. The Senate members were Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and Jon Kyl.
Among the other Republican notables were Newt Gingrich and strategist Frank Luntz. Oddly, neither Mitch McConnell nor John Boehner was present.
Luntz, the speechwriter, the same man Sean Hannity had thrown out of Fox Studios in 2008, was the organizer of the affair, according to Robert Draper in his recently published book “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives” (Free Press, 2012).
“You’ll have nothing to do that night, and right now we don’t matter anyway, so let’s all be irrelevant together,” Luntz told his cohorts.
They agreed to have the meeting, and that unity was absolutely necessary if they were going to prevent Obama from winning a second term.
“The only way we’ll succeed is if we’re united,” said Ryan, a Wisconsin representative. “If we tear ourselves apart, we’re finished.”
At the meeting on the chilly evening, where spectators shivered and trembled around the U.S. Capitol, finding little relief in the hand warmers distributed by Obama supporters, Gingrich was the first to speak at the comfortable cabal.
He said Obama’s inauguration speech was impressive and that it contained the expected pragmatism and risk-taking, and “these could have been our words,” he lamented.
The plan they concocted was to attack Obama personally, Draper wrote. The man, the Republicans conceded, was too popular.
In several dramatic ways, the Republicans accomplished their mission, and if not bringing the government to a halt, they seriously disrupted and delayed things ever since Obama gained the Oval Office.
Among the other targets in their crosshairs were Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Rep. Charles Rangel, then-chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
“I don’t have the details of the meeting nor have I read the book,” Rangel said in phone interview. “But it is interesting how quickly they and Newt assembled to destroy the president.”
Given the power he held and his potent base in Harlem, Rangel said he wasn’t surprised that he was targeted. “But let me gather more details before I offer my full response,” he said.
Curiously, Gingrich’s run for the presidency is grinding to a halt, and here’s how Draper quoted him at the end of that strategy session in the Caucus Room.
“You will remember this day,” he began. “You’ll remember this as the day the seeds of 2012 were sown.”
Most of the intended plans by the Republicans were put into action: Kyl went after Geithner, and the leadership of the House was unrelenting in its opposition to the stimulus package.
Perhaps most rewarding in Draper’s book is the extent to which he exposes the nefarious plans of this select crew of GOP hit men, and it shores up the notion of how the electoral race can animate the political season.
The excerpt from Draper’s book available online at Amazon merely teases the reader, particularly with the abrupt ending on a discussion of the Congressional Black Caucus and the presence of Allen West of Florida, the Black Caucus’ lone Republican.