by Mark Silva on Thursday and updated today, 8:30 am EDT

Republicans are accusing the Obama White House of an offensive offensive strategy for confronting its critics -- which lately include FOX News Channel's most vocal commentators. The White House says it's simply trying to keep the record straight.

And Chicago-based friends of the president take exception to that "Chicago-style politics'' charge that the House Republican leader leveled at President Obama -- "cracks at my city,'' friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett calls it.

Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, on the Senate floor, has accused the president of reviving the old "enemies list'' of Nixon days , this from a guy who served the Nixon White House as a young man. Those enemies include the insurance industry.

And now House Republican Leader John Boehner says the White House's attack tactics are nothing short of "Chicago-style politics.''

"The White House and congressional Democrats know that their liberal special-interest agenda is not very popular,'' Boehner (R-Ohio) said at his weekly press briefing on Thursday. "And now they are following a familiar pattern: when you can't win an argument based on the facts, launch vicious political attacks.

"This Chicago-style politics is shutting the American people out and demonizing their opponents,'' Boehner asserted.

"They are writing the health care bill in secret, even though the president called for all of this to be out on an open table and have C-SPAN cameras in the room,'' he said. "Instead, Democrats are targeting those who don't fall immediately in line - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, doctors, Fox News.

"The administration promised during the campaign that they were going to usher in an era of 'post-partisanship' in here in Washington,'' the House Republican leader said, "but what they are doing is flat-out despicable."

Jarrett, one of the president's closest advisers and a friend from Chicago, was in Chicago this morning, where she told MSNBC's Morning Joe -- see the video above -- that the White House is trying to be "clear and direct '' with the public with a goal of passing health-care legislation this year.

"We're not going to let distortions get in the way of delivering health care to the people,'' said Jarrett, asked about Boehner's comments. "It's not an attack, it's nothing other than trying to speak directly with people, so that they understand what's in the bill'' and health care is passed this year.

Asked on-air by the editor of Oprah Winfrey's O magazine about the meaning of Chicago politics - and if it entails responding when attacked, Jarrett said: "That's exactly right. I'm home in Chicago (this morning). I really don't like people taking cracks at my city. I love this town.''

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