Graham: Obama Must Act On Syria After Speech, With Or Without Congress

GLORIA BORGER: OK. But you say he's backed himself into a corner. So does he even have to go to Congress?

LINDSEY GRAHAM: You know, there's probably a reason 225 times presidents didn't come to Congress. I don't know if I'd come to talk with us. Quite frankly. The president has mismanaged this from day one about what we're trying to do, the goals we're trying to achieve. I think he made an unbelievably compelling case that we need to act here and compare that to the unbelievably small response we're going to give.

So at the end of the day, if I were the president I would act after this speech if diplomacy fell apart and I wouldn't come back to Congress.

JESSICA YELLIN: Do you think he --

GRAHAM: Because if he does his credibility as a world leader is completely shot. You can't address the world and talk to your enemies and your friends in the tone he did and do nothing.

YELLIN: But was it a mistake not to lay out a timeframe for diplomacy to work?

GRAHAM: Don't worry. The Congress will help him there. If two weeks from now we're still talking about how many -- what the inventory in Syria is like for the chemical weapons, nobody is going to be able to tolerate that.

YELLIN: Really? You don't think he's shown exceptional patience today?

GRAHAM: What I think is the president really is trying to do -- force does matter. I don't think we'd have this conversation without the threat of military force. I really believe the president's right about that when the Foreign Relations Committee passed the resolution. I think Assad and Russia took this a bit differently.

Via: Real Clear Politics

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OBAMA BLAMES WASHINGTON GRIDLOCK, PARTISANSHIP ON FAMILY, DAUGHTERS

HE WILL HAVE PLENTY OF TIME STARTING JANUARY 20, 2013

President Barack Obama is partly blaming his family and children for his inability to lessen Washington’s partisanship and gridlock during his first term. 

On CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday show, Jessica Yellin said she interviewed Obama for a forthcoming documentary and asked him why he did not do more outreach to Republicans in the beginning of his term to bridge the divides Obama often rails against. 

Yellin said Obama told her one of the reasons he did not was because he wanted to spend more time at home with his kids and family. 

"He was trying to spend some time at home with his family in the evenings and on the weekends,” Yellin said. 

Yellin noted Obama suggested things may be different in the second term when his kids are older.

“If this was such a priority, why didn’t he do it?,” Yellin asked. “You can carve out one night a week to go out and socialize and reach across the aisle.” 

Obama ran a campaign in which he said he would unite “red America” and “blue America." And even though Democrats controlled Congress during his first two years in office and still control the Senate, Obama is trying to run against what he often calls the “Republican Congress,” which he is trying to blame for making partisanship and gridlock worse in Washington. 

Obama and his campaign have also tried to tie Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to this “Republican Congress,” but Ryan has often noted that even though he is the House Budget Chairman, he has not met with Obama in over a year. 

From Yellin's interview, though, it seems like a president who puts a premium on bipartisanship on the stump did not even care to work with or get to know Republicans in order to make bipartisanship more likely upon coming to Washington. 

Via: Breitbart

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