Newsweek Reporter Urges Obama to 'Bully' Republicans

Newsweek's Katie Connolly, on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show over the weekend, determined that Barack Obama, even in the face of the stunning loss in Massachusetts, needs to become more entrenched in his liberal ways and not bother working with the GOP as she advised the President to "bully Republicans." After host Chris Matthews prompted the White House correspondent to report on how the administration viewed the effectiveness of the State of the Union Address, Connolly, playing political strategist, offered her own take instead: "My personal view is they need to ditch all of this talk of bipartisanship, post-partisanship....What they need to do is start calling Republicans out..."

The following exchange was aired on the January 31 edition of The Chris Matthews Show:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: What's the White House view of how they did?

KATIE CONNOLLY, NEWSWEEK, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think what they, they are looking at doing, what they need to do, in my personal view is they need to ditch all of this talk of bipartisanship, of post-partisanship. That hasn't worked for them. What they need to do is start calling Republicans out on this, and he started doing that on Wednesday night.

MATTHEWS: But wait a minute. Doesn't he have to keep encouraging them and teasing them into trying to join him?

CONNOLLY: I don't, there, there is, he needs one or two votes in the Senate to get anything passed. That's the political reality. But he needs to, perhaps, bully Republicans into doing that, rather than doing this careful walk around them.

-Geoffrey Dickens is the senior news analyst at the Media Research Center.