The Republicans simply don’t want to pass comprehensive health-care reform. That is the main lesson of today’s health-care summit. It started, as Steve Stromberg pointed out earlier, with the Republicans wanting to talk more about process than about the content of the various health-care bills. It approached an end with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) delivering the core Republican message: “Scrap this bill.”
As I argued in a post I put up before the summit began, this discussion would be successful if it simply revealed the stark philosophical differences between the parties. That’s exactly what it’s done. Now it is absolutely clear that the only way health-care reform will pass is through majority rule in the Senate, otherwise known as the “reconciliation process.” Democrats will have to have the guts to do it on their own. Republicans wanted to talk about process or tried to poke holes in President Obama’s proposals. They sought not to emphasize their own ideas because their own bills are so much smaller and do so much less.
[snipped: please visit the page to read the rest.]
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Today's health-care summit: a liberal's POV
By E.J. Dionne
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3 comments:
From the LTE comments:
sloboda wrote on 02/25/2010 02:22:09 PM: I have sat and watched this thing on C-SPAN and just 10 min nobody spoke god himself. I truly felt like vomiting in the trash can. This guy can not go 5 min without hearing himself talk or I would guess looking in a mirror. Truly embarassing
Good zinger in response by dave34104: dave34104 wrote on 02/25/2010 03:05:45 PM: sloboda...well, if you get sick from watching don't ask the Republicans to help you get health care...if you can't afford it, you can't have it is how they think.
I know I'm biased, (reality has a liberal bias) but what I saw this morning was our President making sense and Republicans lying.
What made my jaw drop was the Republicans speaking about Government like they had nothing to do with it.
As I posted in The O:
Republicans, circa 2005: "Up and down vote"
Republicans today: "start over"
They sing better together than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
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