That effort was aimed at GOP policymakers such as Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, hoping to thaw the gridlock and achieve a grand bargain on the budget this summer. But Alexander and other Republicans say the current tactics being employed by the administration threaten to wipe out the gains Obama made with them earlier this year.

“I preferred it when he sat down for dinner with Republicans and said, ‘How can we fix the debt?’ I prefer it when he sits down with eight Republicans and Democrats and says how can we fix our immigration system. I don’t like it when they invent crises as a way of bullying senators, and it won’t be productive for him or it won’t be productive for the country,” Alexander told reporters.

“There’s no basis for the president inventing these crises — it’s unpresidential. It’s embarrassing to me,” an unusually agitated Alexander said. “Why doesn’t he fire his campaign manager and put his chief of staff in charge, and start fixing the debt and dealing with immigration and quit inventing crises because he’s losing any capacity he’s going to have for Republican support for important issues by these kind of tactics, and that includes me.”