Obama Vs GOP House Republicans at the GOP House Issues Conference, Jan. 29, 2010

Now I do not try to pass myself off as some type of political buff, but I just had to comment on the recent encounter between Obama vs GOP House Republicans on January 29th. Because it was just so strange.

Number one, it was strange to see Obama speaking one-on-one to the same group of people who have been trying to trash him in the media and to their constituents for over a year now.

Secondly, it appeared to be a classic case of a plan "blowing up in your face," big time. I'm not sure exactly why the Republicans decided to invite President Obama to this event, but it doesn't look like it was a smart move for their cause.

Why? Because Obama made the GOP members at this event look like a group of simpletons. Some of them threw out trite talking points and falsehoods. They didn't really seem to have legitimate questions to pose -- many simply used this event as an opportunity to try to make the President look bad. Not a good strategy.

This is how the exchange appeared, in my opinion:
Obama: Please, stop placing blame...
Republicans: Blame blame blame....

Shouldn't the purpose of this type of gathering be to solve some problems for the country?

For example, when Jeb Hensarling (R. Texas), in not so many words, accused the President of boosting the deficit to unprecedented levels.

The President quickly replied "That's factually just not true," and then proceeded to explain to all of us how Bush left us with a $1.3 trillion deficit, which is expected to grow to $8 trillion within 10 years. Obama then broke down exactly how Bush and House Republicans (who were in power then) created this deficit. There was silence because no one in the audience was prepared to dispute these facts.

And guess what. Someone did do a fact check (click here)-- lo and behold President Obama was absolutely correct.

House Republicans were completely unprepared for this debate with President Obama. They did not come armed with truths -- only accusations.

One more thing I noticed. Most of the "big bad" Republicans you see in the media seemed to cower in Obama's presence. Many stumbled over their words, looked uncomfortable and couldn't even look the Pres in the eyes.

Maybe, again, that was due to the strangeness of this event -- they don't get many opportunities to go head-to-head with the President in a way that sometimes appeared to be disrespectful.

Finally, the icing on the cake came when we heard that the Fox News Channel cut the footage of the event 20 minutes early and the Republicans decided to shut off the cameras as well (read more here). What was up with that?

Well you can view the entire encounter here and judge for yourself. But I think it's safe to declare President Obama the winner in this strange yet eye-opening "battle" of Obama vs GOP.