Ben Smith at Politico captures the state of play as well as anyone at this stage:
… “bipartisanship” is as much a brand as any conceivable Washington reality. These House Republicans, as is traditional when a caucus shrinks, are more conservative, and in safer seats, than their predecessors. The notion that they’d wind up anything other than extremely rare allies of the Democratic President was always unlikely. Obama doesn’t need their votes. But his visible, cable-television-grabbing bipartisan gestures are aimed at cementing his hold on that brand, and ensuring when Republicans and Democrats go their separate ways, Republicans are seen as the partisan ones.
It’s not a particularly novel tactic, but it places the House Republicans in an uncomfortable spot. As Chris Cillizza wrote in a very smart piece today, their party is in danger of being defined as pure, intransigent, Rush-Limbaugh-style opposition, and Obama’s visit to the Hill may give their image a further shove down that road.
I’ve read of news reports (ABC and NBC) discussing Obama’s visits in just these terms — that he was working at outreach and the Rs wouldn’t budge. It doesn’t hurt Obama that there are those on the left howling about compromising with Rs. Obama was seen working at some compromise (and 33% of the package being tax cuts is compromise) and was seen being rebuffed.
Obama will be doing more of this, not less and you can see that the optics are as important as the substance. The minority caucus can afford all of their purity stands — with some notable exceptions (Snowe, Collins, Spector). And these exceptions are folks known to be able to garner Independent AND Democratic votes. Conservative purity only speaks to the conservative base — which isn’t enough to win majorities any more.