President Barack Obama cited a Republican "fever" as the reason why he hasn't been able to make progress on deficit reduction or immigration reform at a Minneapolis fundraiser today.

The remarks are one of Obama's sharpest Republican critiques — equating their recent activism with illness — and are sure to draw condemnation from the right.

From the pool report:

Most of the talk was standard campaign speech, but the president did say he hopes that Republicans will be more cooperative after he wins reelection.



"It will be coming to a head in this election. We're going to have as stark a contrast as we've seen in a very long time between the two candidates. 2008 was a significant election, obviously. But John McCain believed in climate change. John believed in campaign finance reform. He believed in immigration reform. There were some areas where you saw some overlap."

"In this election, the Republican Party has moved in a fundamentally different direction. The center of gravity for their party has shifted."



He talked of deficit reduction and said "we couldn't' get them to take yes for an answer."



"I believe that If we're successful in this election, when we're successful in this election, that the fever may break, because there's a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that. My hope, my expectation, is that after the election, now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn't make much sense because I'm not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again."



"I believe that If we're successful in this election, when we're successful in this election, that the fever may break, because there's a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that. My hope, my expectation, is that after the election, now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn't make much sense because I'm not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again."



Obama said he expects that after his reelection, Congress will pass a balanced deficit reduction plan, a highway bill, immigration reform.



"My expectation is that if we can break this fever, that we can invest in clean energy and energy efficiency because that's not a partisan issue."