If you haven’t yet seen the full hour and a half on C-SPAN, it’s worth watching.. At the start of the session there was a palpable energy in the room. The Republicans were out for blood and they were surprised that the White House had allowed cameras into the room. (Something the Bush administration strictly prohibited.) They had their talking points… They knew that they had the momentum… They had a national forum for exposing the President as a shallow fraud who was unable to form an intelligent thought without cue cards… but after the first three questions it became an embarrassing affair as Republican talking points, masquerading as questions, were dismantled and dismissed as if they were high school debaters with nothing more than, “yo mama” jokes.

Politician after politician read his or her questions of of note cards, regardless of whether or not another republican had asked the same questions. They claims sounded to sound more crazy and more hollow with each response from the president, and worse of all… Obama was conciliatory. Not only was he eloquent and polite as he answered the questions, but continually repeated his call to put aside partisan bickering, going as far as to say that the Democrats were to blame for very much the same.

In other words… this president showed himself to be intelligent, witty, competent, and gracious.

It’s so nice to have that in the White House once more.

From AlterNet: House Republicans were fired up and ready to go for their conversation with President Obama at their annual retreat today. According to the New York Times, members of the conservative Republican House Conference said they were “itching to quiz the president and present their policy ideas rather than listen to another lofty presidential address.” Although such sessions generally occur behind closed doors, Republicans agreed to open it up after the White House said it was willing to do so. However, after Obama’s strong performance,some Republicans are now regretting that decision. As Luke Russert reported on MSNBC:

RUSSERT: Tom Cole — former head of the NRCC, congressman from Oklahoma — said, “He scored many points. He did really well.” Barack Obama, for an hour and a half, was able to refute every single Republican talking point used against him on the major issues of the day. In essence, it was almost like a debate where he was front and center for the majority of it. … One Republican said to me, off the record, behind closed doors: “It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.”