Obama schedules joint session job speech at same time as GOP Debate.

[Torie]

I heard somewhere that the House asked Obama to delay his speech by a day to avoid the conflict.

[Torie]

Wow...Obama actually gave in. Holy crap.

He had to.

[Torie]

Boehner's office should tape every conversation with the White House. Now the WH says that they pre-cleared the Wednesday date with this office, and his office denies it. Somebody is "spinning." This has happened before, including inter alia just who it was that caused negotiations over the grand compromise to collapse. The truth on that is probably neither man had enough control over his party's caucus, and both had to pull back. But no, no, we can't admit that can we?

In other news, all's well that ends well. The publicity will bump up the audience for the GOP debate, and I don't watch football much anyway.

[Torie]

Boehner's office should tape every conversation with the White House. Now the WH says that they pre-cleared the Wednesday date with this office, and his office denies it. Somebody is "spinning."

What makes you so sure it's not the other side that's doing the spinning?

I don't know who is spinning. Maybe both sides are. What I do know is that these disparate stories about this and that seem to be getting habitual, and it just feeds the fire that DC is dysfunctional.

[Torie]

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That is the WH side of the story.  Boehner's office says no, the WH just set the date unilaterally without advance discussion. Dems are annoyed about the lack of notice too actually. Fun, fun.

[Torie]

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Sigh.

From Politico:

WH claim: Before Obama backed down Wednesday night, each side accused the other of bad faith, bad taste and bad command of the facts.

Senior White House officials, responding to Boehner’s letter under cloak of anonymity, told POLITICO the speaker had essentially signed off on the 8 p.m., Sept. 7 slot before they went public.

“[The] date and time were cleared with the speaker’s office this morning, before the letter went out,” an Obama aide said.

Boehner office denial: A Boehner spokesman went on the record to deny the claim. “No one in the Speaker’s office — not the Speaker, not any staff — signed off on the date the White House announced today,” Boehner press secretary Brendan Buck wrote in an email. “Unfortunately we weren’t even asked if that date worked for the House. Shortly before it arrived this morning, we were simply informed that a letter was coming. It’s unfortunate the White House ignored decades — if not centuries — of the protocol of working out a mutually agreeable date and time before making any public announcement."