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First: best three random reactions out of hundreds, maybe thousands, that i've read all over the web yesterday: "It was as though Obama reauthorized torture for 90 minutes—a masterful performance".
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"This was like something straight from The West Wing. Glad i've been alone so i could shout to the TV:
LET OBAMA BE OBAMA!"*
"I scared the bejeezus out of all three dogs cheering Obama on! That was absolutely the best political teevee I have ever seen, outside Election night last year and Inauguration Day!!
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Second, all kinds of tweets:Tweetie RT @ezraklein: You know, I'm really impressed Obama's people could get all that on the teleprompter so fast.
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Tweetie RT @peterdaou: How strategically inept of Republicans to put themselves in a position where Obama can school them on live TV
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Tweetie RT @marcambinder: Obama looked like a law prof; the GOPers looked like students challenging him.
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Tweetie RT @marcambinder: How effective is this for POTUS: Fox News Channel just cut away from it.
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Tweetie RT @DavidCornDC: O agrees to stay longer. "I'm having fun." He can smell the political win here.
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Tweetie RT @DavidCornDC: This O-GOP exchange is evidence....that the GOP underestimates Obama.
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Tweetie RT @LarrySabato: This is the most useful session I've seen if we want to combat polarization. Institutionalize it!
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Tweetie RT @RogerEbert: Fox News has Obama unscripted in a room full of GOP legislators and CUTS AWAY. Unfair, biased, and cowardly.
Third, all kinds of reviews:<...>
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Mike Madden:Before President Obama started speaking to the House Republican conference's retreat in Baltimore Friday, the GOP presented him with a little book, one that wrapped up all of the policy ideas they've had since he took office that have languished. It had a catchy title: "Better Solutions." The pamphlet may not be an ideal blueprint for governing -- it only takes 30 pages to wrap up everything from economic stimulus to national security to financial reform -- but, as it turned out, it did make for a pretty good prop.
Which Obama demonstrated about an hour into what was easily the most entertaining program C-SPAN (or any cable news network, really) has aired in a long time "You say, for example, that we've offered a health care plan, and I look up -- this is just {in} the book that you've just provided me, 'Summary of GOP Health Care Reform Bill,'" Obama said, casually flipping through the book as Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., stood by. Price had demanded the president tell Republicans how they should answer constituents who don't like the way the White House says the GOP hasn't offered any ideas. So Obama played it deadpan. '"The GOP plan will lower health care premiums for American families and small businesses, addressing America's number one priority for health reform.' I mean, that's an idea that we all embrace. But specifically it's got to work."
Two days after his feisty State of the Union speech, Obama's trip to the retreat started off slowly, with a speech that could have worked almost anywhere with only a few edits ahead of time. And then the question-and-answer session got started, and the event turned into a spectacle, the kind of thing that hasn't been seen in American politics in years -- and probably won't again, once the people responsible for putting it together go back to look at the video. (Which is too bad, because NBC does have an opening for a 10 p.m. show, and this was a lot more watchable than Leno.) Rarely has his administration done such a good job of bluntly underscoring the differences between what Obama wants to do and what Republicans would prefer if they had power. The president was funny and disarming, but he defended his policies fiercely, and he tiptoed up to the line of calling Republicans liars to their faces...
The whole thing basically went like that: Republican asks obnoxious question rooted in Glenn Beck-ian talking points; Obama swats it away, makes the questioner look silly, and then smiles at the end. It got so bad, in fact, that Fox News cut away from the event before it was over. Democratic operatives around Washington watching it had pretty much the same reaction: "Where the hell has this guy been?" One source said GOP aides probably wished they'd spoken to John McCain "about what happened to him in the presidential debates" before they broadcast the event. "It's quite a show," a White House official said, apparently going for the same deadpan tone the president was...
... By the time Obama was done, and had stayed about 30 minutes past when he was scheduled to leave, Republican leadership was ready to get him out of the room. One GOP lawmaker asked for one more question, and as Obama started to say he was out of time, Pence jumped in, too: "He's gone way over." And with that, Obama took his booklet of GOP policy proposals and left the room -- in much better political shape, possibly, than he was when he walked in...
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