GOP still amazed that Obama sandbagged them in his speech

At a time when the parties risk economic catastrophe unless they can come together to raise the debt limit, Obama’s partisan tone made no sense, Republicans across Capitol Hill said Thursday. Even some Obama allies wondered whether the president had made a tactical error.

“Yes,” the tenor of the speech was surprising, said Erskine Bowles, who headed Obama’s fiscal commission and is working with a bipartisan group of six senators to develop a compromise plan to rein in borrowing…

“Reagan had the decency to insult his enemies when he was out of town,” grumbled one GOP aide…

Camp said he received a call from fiscal commission co-chairman Alan Simpson, who was also in the audience and was “concerned about the partisan nature of the event and how unnecessary and unproductive and unhelpful it would be.”