Earlier tonight, Barack Obama went to George Will's house in Chevy Chase, Maryland for a no doubt jovial evening with a few (or more) conservative pundits. Will may or may not have been there, but three known attendees were Fred Barnes (see the update), William Kristol, David Brooks, and Charles Krauthammer (link). FWIW, the Huffington Post assures us that Rush Limbaugh was not there.
We have (thankfully) only two entries here involving Krauthammer, both from 2007. The first is good, where he discussed a biased CBS/NYT poll. The second isn't so good; he's a NAU denier.
As for Barnes and Brooks, both are complete, illegal immigration-supporting hacks.
Whatever Obama's political reasons for meeting with them, he's for the most part only getting one set of conservative or liberal opinions, the establishment Beltway set that supports illegal activity just as strongly as Obama does. Obama would sooner dine at Arby's than meet with, say, a moderate like Lou Dobbs or a paleoconservative like Pat Buchanan.
Note also that Sam Stein of the HuffPost is trying to telegraph that the correct response from the leftwing is sheer, utter obsequiousness rather than outrage:
Obama has pledged to be a uniter once in office. He's also said he is willing to take policy suggestions from any source, regardless of ideological affiliation, as long as they work. So far, he's living up to his word.
UPDATE: I'd swear that I read that Fred Barnes was one of the attendees, but now I can't find that; he might have been there but they don't consider him important enough, or that might have been just a preliminary report, or I might have read "Weekly Standard" and gotten confused over which WS hack is which. Pending confirmation that he was there, I took his name out of the title, and put Kristol in the text.
UPDATE 2: OK, Barnes wasn't there. However, per this, Will was indeed there, as were Larry Kudlow, Rich Lowry, Peggy Noonan, Michael Barone, and Paul Gigot. None of those are border hawks, with Kudlow being a clueless supporter, Barone being a Brooks-style complete hack, and Gigot working for the Wall Street Journal, a paper that wishes there was no border at all.
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