President Bush has invited leaders of the conservative Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions to the White House Friday to discuss areas of “mutual cooperation” in the words of one Democratic Congressional aide.
The outreach comes at a time when Bush’s image on Capitol Hill and around the country has taken a serious beating. The meeting is scheduled just two days after the Iraq Study Group is scheduled to release its findings and one day after the Senate Armed Services Committee plans to hold hearings on them.
Reps. Alan Boyd (Fla.), Dennis Moore (Kan.) and Mike Ross (Ark.) will represent the Blue Dogs, a coalition of usually southern, conservative-leaning Democrats and Reps. Joe Crowley (N.Y.), Artur Davis (Ala.), Ron Kind (Wis.), Adam Smith (Wash.) and Ellen Tauscher (Calif.) are set to represent the New Democrats, a group of business-friendly centrists, at the meeting, which the president is expected to attend.
I don’t know if this is an end-run around party leadership, but I choose to be optimistic that the President is taking even baby steps towards participating in building consensus.
Born 1950, Married, Living in Austin Texas, Semi
Retired Small Business owner and investor. My political interest
evolved out of his business experience that the best decisions come out of an objective gathering of information and a pragmatic consideration of costs and benefits. I am interested in promoting Centrist candidates and Policies. My posts are mostly about people and policies that I believe are part of the solution rather the problem.