Although Obama met with Republicans over lunch Tuesday, GOP senators said there’s virtually no direct communication between the president and top GOP leaders. They said Obama has spoken one on one with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky just three times since the 2008 elections — once when the two talked by cell phone while McConnell was out grocery shopping.

Two of those calls came this month: one after news broke that the president planned to nominate Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court and another when Obama called to ask if he could attend the GOP lunch Tuesday.

“He basically has no information about Senate Republicans,” Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said Wednesday. “He has no source of reliable information about what’s happening among our colleagues, what we’d like to do, what’s important to us, how we could be helpful to him.”…

“The pattern is they’re pretty good at reaching out when they need you, and when they don’t, they don’t mind running over you,” Graham — one of the few Republicans who have tried to broker compromises with the White House — told POLITICO Wednesday. “The distrust level right now is pretty high among our guys — and on both sides.”