Huffpo reports - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
President Obama met Tuesday afternoon with a small group of conservative reporters, columnists and commentators for an off-the-record discussion.
The group, according to a source familiar with the meeting, included Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot, National Review Washington editor Robert Costa, Washington Examiner columnist Byron York, syndicated columnists Kathleen Parker and Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer.
Obama and the journalists talked for about 90 minutes in the Roosevelt room.
Being that it was off-the-record there will be no quotes or stories released from these folks tomorrow or in the future. But I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for this meeting.
I assume this was set-up to see if Pres Obama could convince them that the minority party holding the debt ceiling hostage to get legislative changes is a constitutional crisis and cannot be tolerated and that he is completely committed to not negotiating over the debt ceiling. Off the record discussions are a bit more free wheeling in questions and answers, in the give and take and is a better way to try and reach these folks than an official, on the record interview which would result in posturing and form answers will little to be gleaned.
I'd love for him to ask what they would have thought and reported if Reid and Pelosi in 2006 held the debt ceiling hostage to get Bush to end his tax cuts on the rich, and to pull out of Iraq etc. or if in the future it would be a-ok for Democrats to extort immigration reform, restrictive gun access laws from a Republican President or crash the whole American and world economy. What they think would happen if he gives in now - that the GOP wouldn't be back the next time, even more emboldened and demand the end to social security.
It would be interesting if these reporters would reach out to Bush 41 and 43, or to 2016 GOP hopefuls to get their feelings on such an extortion tactic and how they'd handle it.
Also on the news front -
It will be interesting to see who these reporters are ie where they're from. Local anchors are much more fact based and will better report exactly what's at stake and what the debt ceiling is than the Village Info-tainers who get caught up in their own drama and ego's. Pres Obama used this end around before when he wasn't happy with the network coverage.