Tuesday was a very interesting day indeed. It was the day Barack Obama had dinner with some of his harshest critics.
The president-elect tonight is having dinner with some ideological adversaries: four of the most widely-read conservative columnists.
The right-wing punditocracy met at the house of uber-winger George Will. The men who tried to defeat him in the recent election. The men who tried to paint him as any number of things other than what he really is. One of those men was FOX's own Charles Krauthammer. On his mother station, Charles wouldn't reveal much about the affair other than to say:
Charles: What's interesting is the fact that he would want to do this. And you see that since his election he's kind of reached out to people who may not be his ideological allies. To Rick Warren, the pastor who will be at his inaugural. To John McCain, who he's 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's intellectually curious and he wants to exchange ideas. Also in part because he wants to co-opt the vast right wing conspiracy and I'm here to tell that speaking for myself---he succeeded. I'm brainwashed entirely. I'm in the tank and I'm a believer now in hope and change and above all audacity.
.
Ahhh, meeting with these men who often were exposed as cads and charlatans and whose ideas were almost always wrong, ideas that helped bring ruin to our great nation the last eight years. The political ideologues who so deeply resent him were validated as real men of thought by his actions; that which so stings the progressive movement after what we did for him day after day and month after month.
He has kept his campaign promise to the people by reaching out to the other side so far, but I don't think anyone expected him to break bread with these ultra-conservative windbags before he's even been sworn in.
And as exemplifies their perspective, he's being mocked by the very people he reached out to less than twenty four hours later. Could it have been any other way?
UPDATE: Think Progress:
