And I will do the same.
Yesterday was political theater, pure and simple. The Democrats did their dead-level best to portray Republicans as dastardly obstructionists, and Republicans did their best to portray the Democrats as power-hungry socialists. Overall, I think they both scored some points and lost others... pretty much a wash. Neither side won, so let's call it a tie.
But in this case, a tie works to help the Republicans... the Dems had to accomplish something that moved momentum to their side so they can shove their bill through, and that didn't happen. So the Republicans got the advantage there.
They behaved just right, you know? The Republicans were respectful enough... but not TOO respectful to fight. They were all reading from the same page, so to speak, so their message was uniform and consistent. Their first and strongest point throughout the entire summit was that the current bills are full of sweetheart deals and special deals, and that the starting point of any bipartisan negotiations HAS TO BE to scrap the existing bills and start over.
Democrats were adamant that this wouldn't happen... the bills would be pushed through with or without the Republicans. That alone should tell us how much political theater this was, as they didn't even pretend not to want to push their partisan bill through.
PresBo controlled the meeting, and he did his best to monopolize the time. He cut off the Republicans several times because of "time constraints," but somehow never managed to limit how long it took him to reply to them. So they had that advantage.
One thing I noticed repeatedly was that PresBo was trying to frame the debate... and failing. For example, when McCain called for starting over and emphasized that the American people don't want all the special deal-making that went into the House and Senate bills, PresBo first tried to make it look like McCain was doing something wrong. "We're not campaigning now, John." That sentence does nothing to dispute the points McCain made, but what the heck... it made a good sound-bite. Then he said, "We can talk about process or we can talk about content."
The problem is that process DRIVES the content. The secretive, highly partisan process used to construct the existing bills determined what those bills contained. Absolutely. So PresBo was disingenuous there.
One thing I was looking for at the end, the one thing I felt HAD to be there for the Democrats to claim a victory, was some kind of definitive framing of the debate. In order to win, PresBo had to strongly frame the day in such a way that Democrats won... and he didn't.
Another interesting development was PresBo saying things that the Congressional leadership disagreed with. For example, PresBo implied that he's willing to keep talking with Republicans for the next couple of months.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33512.html
“The question that I’m going to ask myself, and I’m going to ask of all of you, is, is there enough serious effort that in a month’s time, or in a few weeks time, or six weeks time, we could actually resolve something,” Obama said to close the seven-hour health care summit. “And if we can’t then I think we’ve got to go ahead and make some decisions.”
Pretty clear, isn't it? He strongly implied a six-week timetable if it looked possible to resolve issues in a bipartisan way. Harry Reid almost immediately disagreed.
But within minutes of Obama’s remark, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made clear that he didn’t envision negotiations with the Republicans that could stretch well into April. "That's the president's timeline, not mine," Reid told POLITICO.
The bottom line, though, is that the day was little more than political posturing. Both sides tried to make their points and made sure to follow their talking points. And despite PresBo's statements about how we need to do more than follow talking points, he and his Congressional allies followed their own talking points pretty well.
So don't expect yesterday's summit to make much difference in the overall debate. Democrats wanted to make a clear case for pushing forward with reconciliation, and that didn't happen. So we're back to PresBo, Reid, and Pelosi trying to strong-arm as many Democrats as possible into following their reconciliation plan.
UPDATE: Here's an interesting article... in just a few paragraphs it summarizes the situation.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/25/dems-gop-set-televised-health-care-showdown/
"It's not going to be possible with that kind of an approach to come together within the timeframe that he indicated if he insists...on starting with this 2,700-page bill, then tweaking it to adopt some of our ideas," said Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No 2. Republican in the Senate.
"I don't think there will be Republican support," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., flatly declared.
Democratic leaders, meanwhile, seemed eager to take the president up on his threat and abandon the prospect of a bipartisan bill.
Matt, an excellent (as usual) summary of the 3 ring circus featuring RINOs in one ring, Jackasses in another ring, and the Ringmaster Clown in the center ring.
ReplyDeleteI admit that the RINOs “acted” more like Republicans in the summit but it takes more than a one day performance to show that they are now adhering to the principles that the Republican Party claims to stand on.
I listened to bits and pieces of the "Summit" while doing other more pressing things. At one point I thought I heard some Republican say, in so many words, something like "our constitution doesn't allow the federal government to do what these health care reform bills are attempting to do...this is an issue the constitution reserves for the states or the people to address". And then Obama quickly responded saying that this was merely a "Republican talking point."
ReplyDeleteIf I heard what I think I heard, THAT was the central issue that should have been discussed, but wasn't, either in the "Summit" meeting or even later by media.
Yeah, I heard the same thing. But if you check, several times when a Republican objection was raised that had been raised prior to the summit, PresBo dismissed it with a "that's a talking point" comment and ignored it completley.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, that was PresBo's way of ignoring objections without having to actually deal with them in a substantive way.
As to the constitutionality of the ObamaCare plan, in my opinion it faces guaranteed court challenges. And it is my opinion that the individual mandate, at least will be overturned by SCOTUS.