By Herb Boyd, May 3, 2012- For more than four hours, a confederacy of Republicans assembled in the Caucus Room, an upscale restaurant in D.C., only hours after Barack Obama’s inauguration, plotting ways in which to immediately begin undermining his presidency.
This meeting included such senior politicos of the GOP as House members Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions. The Senate members were Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and Jon Kyl.
Among the other Republican notables were Newt Gingrich and strategist Frank Luntz. Oddly, neither Mitch McConnell nor John Boehner was present.
Luntz, the speechwriter, the same man Sean Hannity had thrown out of Fox Studios in 2008, was the organizer of the affair, according to Robert Draper in his recently published book “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives” (Free Press, 2012).
“You’ll have nothing to do that night, and right now we don’t matter anyway, so let’s all be irrelevant together,” Luntz told his cohorts.
They agreed to have the meeting, and that unity was absolutely necessary if they were going to prevent Obama from winning a second term.
