What a Novel Idea

Posted by on . 5 comments.

It’s almost as if President Summer’s Eve hadn’t already wasted nine months trying to compromise:

President Obama said Tuesday that he will consider any Republican health care ideas, as long as the ideas address the goals contained in the Democratic plans already passed by the House and Senate.

Just fucking shoot me.

Comments

  1. sarabeth says:
    February 10, 2010 at 6:26 am

    I don’t know, it sounds to me like a perfectly safe statement to make. As safe, for example, as promising to immediately resign if Sarah Palin ever expresses a coherent thought about any political issue.

    Ultimately, it’s just rhetoric designed to draw attention to the complete lack of ideas among Republicans for actually doing anything that will address the real problems with our healthcare system.

    It’s of a piece with the bipartisan healthcare summit proposal, which has made Republicans really uncomfortable. Uncomfortable to the point that they can’t quite figure out which is the lesser of the two evils. Showing up and trying to put a brave face on their complete absence of ideas and their total unwillingness to adopt anything like an adult approach to the problem. Or refusing to show up, and thereby showcasing their unconscionable disregard for the plight of tens of millions of Americans who lack affordable healthcare, their callous unconcern for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are forced into medical bankruptcy every year despite having health insurance, their sociopathic indifference to the 45,000 Americans who die every year because they lack health insurance.

  2. matt says:
    February 10, 2010 at 7:12 am

    so you’re arguing 3D chess?

    oh how the mighty have fallen.

    all of this might be all in the game, but we’ve been through this. allowing them to stall, courting Snowe and whoever else is what killed the bill before. and if they are allowed to stall again, the next time this gets taken up there will be republican majorities in both houses.

    this is a weak but vain man fumbling around on bad advice, mistaken assumptions, and a 20 year outdated understanding of politics.

  3. sarabeth says:
    February 10, 2010 at 7:42 am

    Courting Snowe (or Collins) is a different issue. But the strategy behind the live-on-CSPAN bipartisan summit is perfectly transparent, and sensible too. So it hardly qualifies as 3-d chess.

    It’s not so much that Obama is allowing Republicans to stall healthcare reform at this point. It’s automatically stalled while Democrats figure out a) how the heck they can get that reconciliation bill through the Senate at all with Republicans threatening an infinite number of amendments, b) how they get the reconciliation bill passed by the Senate before the House passes the Senate bill.

    While the bills are stalled, putting Republicans on the spot via the televised bipartisan summit is a perfectly good idea, I think.

  4. matt says:
    February 10, 2010 at 8:12 am

    While the bills are stalled, putting Republicans on the spot via the televised bipartisan summit is a perfectly good idea, I think.

    in a world where democrats were any good at using the media to make republicans look like the buffoons that they are, probably. the problem is that they aren’t, at all. and as long as people like begala (and me) are not being consulted, this is not going to work. in fact, what’s more likely:

    a) a full and fair hearing on the issues that leads to an overwhelming switch in popular opinion toward the shitty democratic bill

    or

    b) republicans via luntz use the time on the stage to inject shiny new catch phrases into the debate that catch the democrats flat-footed and further delay (if not kill entirely) the bill

    at some point i’m going to be wrong about obama’s douchiness, but it won’t be on this. republicans are just better at these kinds of situations, and it doesn’t matter that obama called the meeting. republicans will take the initiative, democrats will react using weak, non-unified language, and that will be the ball game.

  5. sarabeth says:
    February 10, 2010 at 8:45 am

    yes, (sigh), that may well be how it plays out. let’s see…