Deducing seducing

Jonathan Martin makes bi-partisanship sound so dirty. His headline at Politico shouts, Obama tries to seduce Republicans! In an apparent attempt to drum up some left wing outrage, he lists the many ways that Obama is reaching out to the opposition in a good faith effort to build bi-partisan consensus.

It's true that some of us have been fighting so long, and have been burned so many times by GOP perfidy that we just can't believe it's possible to deal in good faith with Republican power brokers. Obama apparently believes he can do it. Time will tell who's right, but in the interim, it's clear that Obama is giving it his best efforts despite the constant sniping from both sides of the fence. One suspects that his adversaries fear more for their own future than any sense of what's best for the country.

Said Charles Krauthammer, the longtime conservative columnist who was at Will’s dinner, on Fox News: “You see that since his election he has kind of reached out to people that may not be ideological allies, to Rick Warren, the pastor who will be at his inaugural, to John McCain, whom he has treated with a lot of dignity and respect, and to a bunch of right wing columnists last night, in part, because I think he is a guy who is intellectually curious and wants to exchange ideas, but also in part he wants to co-opt the vast right wing conspiracy.”

Gracious is apparently not in Krauthammer's vocabulary. Notice he uses co-opt instead of co-operate. It's difficult not to notice if Obama succeeds in bringing comity to the process, guys like Chuck will end up looking like cranky old geezers shouting at the kids to get off his lawn if they stick with their same tired memes. They can't exactly accuse Obama of playing partisan politics when he seeks to include everyone.

Meanwhile, it's clear the media elite like Mr. Martin are freaking out that Obama will succeed at putting country above party and personal glory. Going to make it hard to gin up any controversy if everyone is getting along too well. Hell, they might have to do some real reporting, on hard news and important issues and stuff.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]