CNN’s Bash: ‘Ironic’ for GOP To Give Obama More Power After Calling Him ‘Imperial Pres’

TAPPER: Let's go right to CNN chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash. She is on Capitol Hill.Dana, the president called this document a comprehensive and sustained strategy, but some members of his own party are taking issue. They're saying that this authorization is too open-ended, Republicans saying it's too -- it hems him in too much." 
BASH: "Reminds you of Goldilocks that you read to your kids. Republicans think it's too cold, Democrats think it's too hot. The question is can they find something that's just right? Jim talked about the fact that the White House wanted this to be intentionally fuzzy, but the problem that he has is that for many Democrats here, fuzzy equals blank checks when it comes to troops, which is something that Democrats say they are just simply not going to do. Let me just give you an example. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, I spoke to him earlier. He sits on the Foreign Relations Committee." 
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BASH: "What you have to vote on isn't tighter when it comes to authority for troops. Will you vote for it?" 
MURPHY: "It is going to be hard for me to vote for anything that allows for us to repeat the mistakes of the past. And I worry that the language as exists today is going to allow, not for this president, but for the next president, to put major combat troops back into the Middle East. That's likely something that I'm going to a very hard time supporting." 
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BASH: "Jake, let me give you another example of the problem that the president has with Democrats. A veteran Democrat, Ted Lieu of California, just came out and outright opposed the president's AUMF, saying that based on his experience, he does not want to vote for anything that even suggests that they are approving unlimited troops. That's the issue you have on the Democratic side. And of course, Republicans, you have people like John McCain who say that what they are doing is allowing 535 commanders in chief, instead of allowing the commander in chief to have his understanding of how things should go, which is, if you think about it, that Republicans who have been saying that he's the imperial president now want to give him more authority is kind of ironic."