Axelrod Defends Obama’s Early Outreach To GOP

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Speaking at the “Politics and Eggs” breakfast series at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics yesterday, President Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod said it was clear that both sides of the aisle did not share “equal blame” for congressional deadlock. Indeed, he noted that various Democrats thought the President was “too eager” to work with Republicans in the early days, according to the Daily Caller.

“I’m not willing to assign, sort of, equal blame for what’s happened in Washington,” Axelrod said. “You know, there are Democrats in this room who I think would argue that the President was too eager to try and find a path forward; was too eager to try to bring people together in the face of the evidence that the other side didn’t want to do that.”

Recently, the President has moved to distance himself from the GOP, introducing a jobs plan before stepping back and challenging the Republican-controlled Congress to pass the bill. It’s a move that many Democrats wish the President had made earlier. By pointing to the Congressional gridlock as the real reason for the economic crisis, the President passes the blame onto the opposition party and presents himself as above the fray.

Axelrod still feels that the bipartisan effort was the proper course for the President to take early in his first term. “I don’t regret [the President] making the effort, because I think people elected him to get things done,” he said. “They didn’t elect him to wage a partisan war.”

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