How does the Bush Administration react after being approached by congressional Republicans who are concerned about the situation in Iraq? It publicly berates them, of course. Just in from The Hill:
Top Bush administration officials lashed out at a pair of House Republicans at the White House yesterday after details about a contentious meeting between President Bush and GOP legislators were leaked to the media earlier this week.
Reps. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) attracted the ire of White House officials for allegedly speaking to reporters about a Tuesday meeting between Bush and centrist Republicans on the Iraq war. Details of the contentious meeting first emerged Wednesday evening and attracted Page 1 headlines yesterday.
Unbelievable. Read on...
I'm starting to think that Karl Rove has never cared about the fate of the Republican Party. His reaction to the attempted intervention reflect not only a lack of empathy for the damage Bushco is doing to congressional Republicans, but he apparently thinks that Bush can simply ignore their concerns and suffer no repercussions to his presidency.
Sources said that Dan Meyer, Bush’s liaison to the House, confronted LaHood while White House political strategist Karl Rove rebuked Kirk. It is unclear if LaHood or Kirk were the originial sources for the stories, but LaHood was quoted in one of the articles.
Regardless, LaHood and Meyer got into a shouting match as emotions ran high and voices were raised yesterday morning in the White House while lawmakers were waiting to meet with first lady Laura Bush, according to two legislators who witnessed the exchange.
And Tony Snow thinks that maybe LaHood and Kirk were just a little giddy about getting some face-time with the Decider.
"And I think a lot of members, when they get into a situation like that, they’re excited about the prospect that they do in fact have an opportunity to speak at liberty with the president, so they do it."
Perhaps if lowly GOP members of congress had more of these exciting opportunities to "speak at liberty" with Dear Leader, they wouldn't tell the press about it.
More likely, it was clear to them that Bush wouldn't take them seriously without additional public pressure. Sorry, guys, he's not going to take you seriously no matter what you do.
"The White House is not happy," said a Republican lawmaker.
GOP members of congress better get used to this. Nothing less than impeachment is going to get Bush's attention.