| Politics Winter Is Coming Why the poisonous combination of Benghazi and the IRS audits of conservative groups will make it impossible for Republicans to work with this president. By John Dickerson
Posted Saturday, May 11, 2013, at 02:19 PM ET  In the past couple weeks, in interviews with House and Senate staffers for the Republican leadership, there has been a depressing message: Nothing is going to get done for the next four years. Again and again, the same mantra could be heard. Partisanship and election jockeying for 2014 and 2016 is going to keep everything locked up. Watching the live feed from the White House on Friday it became hard to argue otherwise. President Obama held an event with mothers defending the Affordable Care Act, the start of a monthslong effort to protect his signature achievement, which Republicans have promised to fight all the way to the 2014 elections and beyond. Then, shortly thereafter, White House press secretary Jay Carney jumped between answering questions about the administration's response to the attacks in Benghazi to the Internal Revenue Service targeting the Tea Party and other conservative political groups for audits. It's going to take some time to get to the bottom of these controversies, but we can conclude the pessimists are probably right. Nothing is going to get done in this siege environment. That has long been the state of play in Washington for many observers. Still, there were a few politicians cupping their hands around the flame of bipartisanship. The president was one. He took two Republican senators golfing this week, the latest in a string of efforts to fashion some kind of a budget deal. GOP senators on the receiving end of that charm were also working ... To continue reading, click here.
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