President Barack Obama's failed outreach to the National Rifle Association really illustrates the limits of trying to build political coalitions:
Administration officials said Monday that the Justice Department will ask NRA officials to participate in closed-door meetings in the coming weeks to explore a path forward.
It is not clear whether the path will lead anywhere. Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, rejected the idea. In an interview, he accused the White House of “trying to fog the issue until after the 2012 elections.”
Pointing to a dissenting vote cast by Obama Supreme Court appointee Sonia Sotomayor, who opposed the high court’s 2010 ruling affirming the right to bear arms, LaPierre asked: “Why should I sit down with a group of people who have spent their life fighting the Second Amendment?”
Look, you're the NRA. You want to stop all gun regulations anywhere, ever. You have the political juice to do that. Why would you meet with a president who only wants to push modest gun regulations you don't want, when even talking to him might diminish the populist panic over the possibility that he will take people's guns away that gives you all that juice in the first place? Obama has done virtually nothing to advance the cause of gun control since taking office two years ago, but even just meeting with him might calm the nerves of gun owners and thereby diminish your influence, increasing the possibility that those modest gun regulations might pass.
What reason would you possibly have to talk to Obama? You already have everything you want.
