Obama Will Meet with Hill Republicans

January 12, 2009 1:03 PM

ABC News’ Rick Klein Reports: A little item that could draw an interesting response: House Republican leaders have invited President-elect Barack Obama to a private meeting with the House Republican Conference, at his “earliest convenience” following his inauguration.

“In accordance with your campaign pledge to work in a bipartisan manner and change the partisan tone in Washington, D.C., we would like to extend an invitation to you to address a meeting of the House Republican Conference at your earliest convenience following your inauguration,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter Friday that was co-signed by other members of his leadership team.

“We hope this will be the beginning of a positive working relationship with House Republicans at the start of your Administration.”

The Obama team did not immediately respond to the invitation.

Such meetings with the opposing party’s rank-and-file members have been rare under the Bush administration. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney met with Republican senators and House members semi-regularly, but held only a few private confabs with groups of Democrats, outside of members of leadership.

President Bush did meet privately with a large group of congressional Democrats at least twice. He attended Democratic retreats shortly after he took office, in 2001, and again after Democrats won control of Congress, in 2007.

Then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer touted the first such meeting as part of President Bush’s efforts at “establishing a new tone in Washington” -- a tone, many have argued, hasn’t changed much in the past eight years.

“He's very gratified that he's been invited to the retreats of the Senate Democrats and the House Democrats,” Fleischer said. “It's without modern precedent for a President of the opposite party to go. It may be without precedent entirely.”

UPDATE: A Republican leadership aide tells ABC News that incoming Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel today called Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., the chairman of the House Republican Conference, to accept the invitation for the president-elect to meet privately with the House Republican Conference.

The aide says Emanuel offered an "enthusiastic yes" and said something would be set up for after the inauguration, sometime in the next three weeks.

ABC’s Jennifer Duck contributed to this report.