Obama Announces Plan To Host Republican Surrender Ceremony

Having closed Republicans out of the health reform discussion for months, Obama now wants them to come to a bi-partisan summit to reconcile the House and Senate bills.  Is Obama offering a fresh start?  Noooo:

When asked by Ms. Couric if he would agree to discard the bill and start over, the president said he would not. The starting point, aides said, would be with the proposals that passed the House and Senate.

So the starting point is some amalgam of the House bill which picked up one Republican vote and the Senate bill which got no Republican votes?  Why bother?

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in a statement that he welcomed the bipartisan meeting on health care and called on the president to begin the dialogue “by shelving the current health spending bill.”

“The fact is Senate Republicans held hundreds of town halls and met with their constituents across the country last year on the need for health care reform, outlining ideas for the step-by-step approach that Americans have asked for,” Mr. McConnell said. “And we know there are a number of issues with bipartisan support that we can start with when the 2,700-page bill is put on the shelf.”

I can only presume that Democrats will try to resolve their own differences before this televised stunt.  If Republicans choose to play along with this charade I suppose they can just hammer the abortion and "Cadillac tax" questions.  Obama can get on national television and explain why we will or will not have Federally subsidized abortions.  Then he can explain why the promise he made that people who like their health care can keep it is not compromised by the excise tax (which he derided during the campaign) and why loyally Democratic union members shouldn't be subject to that tax like the rest of us.

If the conversation lags, I suppose Republicans could come back to the individual mandate to buy insurance - there are endless clips from the campaign of Obama explaining why those mandates were unnecessary and a bad idea.  Even if he has changed his mind, it does not seem that all of the independents who voted for him have.

The guy who ran against the excise tax now supports it (maybe depending on whether Dems cross that bridge by Show Time).  The guy who ran against individual mandates now support them.  If Republicans want to help Obama stage a debate, maybe they could just re-read the things he said during the campaign.

The notion that this can all be resolved in half a day is guided by the liberal theory that they have great ideas which have been poorly communicated to a confused public.  Think about that - Dems have the most awesomest orator in the White House since forever, they can rely on the near-universal support of every prominent academic of every prominent university, they can rely on cheerleading from NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC as well as the NY Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, but they can't get their message out on health care reform after talking abut it for a year.  Why not?  Because Glenn Beck has a television show, Rush Limbaugh has a radio show, and Sarah Palin has a Facebook page. Oh, yeah, and because the rest of us are stupid.

Republicans should stick to McConnell's message - rather than try to reform one-sixth of the US economy in three hours, Republicans should offer some simple first steps.  I'll offer one - people with insurance from their current employer worry about "job lock" and loss of coverage due to pre-existing conditions if they switch jobs, and loss of coverage altogether if they lose their job.  COBRA and HIPAA addressed this, but presumably could be expanded or strengthened in some way.  That would do nothing for people who lack insurance but something for the many more people who like the insurance they have and don't want to lose it.  One might hope this could be a small bipartisan step in a sensible direction.

MORE: Jules Crittenden is pithy and amusing.  But you knew that.

Comments

[clarice]

The Won hasn't given up on AGW either-AP"The Obama administration is forming a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.

Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, planned to announce Monday that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service."

Is he way over his head or what?

[clarice]

Crittendon was hilarious!

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Just got off that concall; it was pretty hilarious, actually — and there were several questions asked by MSM about IPCC.

[clarice]

Tell us, Chaco!

[rse]

He picked certain people to be czars or cabinet secretaries so that they would enact particular domestic agendas.

Apparently intervening events and facts will not matter until we get to some type of international crisis.

My kids are so jealous of those schoolkids up your way Clarice.

[clarice]

P.S. You do know a number of big companies and law firms are very committed for financial reasons to keep this alive--they've spent years dreaming up how they are going to increase their fortunes on this AGW scam; they contributed to pols who pushed it and they will not give this up without a big fight.

[Rick Ballard]

The Reps might start with an offer to fully support immediate implementation of all cost saving measures proposed by Team BOzo which were promised to achieve "savings" of some $400 billion. Surely the President would leap at the chance to correct such massive fraud and waste.

[clarice]

rse, my son used to skip his homework on nights when big storms were predicted and then get up very early the next morning to see whether his bet paid off or whether he had to really get to work in time to get it all done. LOL

[pagar]

" that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.""

Sounds like more government job creation to me. Is there no limit to how many people the Obama Administration can put on government payrolls?

[Danube of Thought]

If they do this, I would strongly urge the Republicans to select a single person to speak for all of them--Paul Ryan would be a fine choice.

If they go with the format of the last event, they're walking into the propeller blade. The image of one guy fielding and responding to all of the questions from an assembled group inevitably creates the impression that the one guy is the equal of the total of the others, regardless of the substance of what is said. And that theme is utterly irresitible to the media.

I would love to hear the GOP say, right at the outset, something along the lines of "Mr. President, in the interest of getting a jobs recovery moving, please publicly announce the end of this 'comprehensive' effort immediately. As long as this undead creature stalks the land, no small businessman can know what sort of burdens he will face should he elect to take on so much as one new employee. Please put a merciful, final end to this thing and let's move on."

[The Once]

Let's see, bloviating and getting nothing done got me to the White House. But trying to accomplish something blew up in my face. I'm not a fool; I can see what works. I'm going to go back to bloviating and getting nothing done.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

I'll have more on the concall in a little while (paying markets come first) but the gist of the reaction to the IPCC stuff was always to say mistakes were made but they are still confident of the IPCC report as a whole.

[clarice]

I just hope the Reps prove smarter and more disciplined than they were the first time O pulled off this stunt.

[Jim Ryan]

I've decided to homeschool my kids for government work. That's where the opportunity will be over the next few decades. Our curriculum units:

1. Beginning MS Excel
2. Peoplesoft
3. History of U.S. Genocide against the Indians.
4. Intermediate MS Excel
5. Memorization unit: government employees unions' addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.
6. Term paper project: are current government employees unions' contracts fair enough?
7. Beginning MS Outlook.

[narciso]

I like the Zombie motif, he's possibly the sharpest among the front benchers

[Janet]

The O meeting with Repubs. will be televised while the O meeting with Dems. is behind closed doors in secret meetings with union thugs. Something is fishy....where did I put that White House email address for fishy activities?

[rse]

Clarice-

Back to your 12:07 post. There was a great AT post last week on Citizens United last week and the economic value to other GE businesses of that media corporation exemption.

Did anyone post it here?

My son does much the same on those rare occasions when we have southern frozen precip.

[Ignatz]

--Something is fishy...--

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

[Mike Myers]

It'll be early in the day, but maybe he can serve some beer to smooth things along at this "summit".

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

Jim Ryan:

You have to find some room for Powerpoint. No one can work more than one day for any government without Powerpoint.

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

On the topic. Teh Once is just like Lucy, and the Repub congresscritters like poor ole Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. Even five year olds can predict what will happen.

[cathyf]

Jim Ryan -- you need beginning, intermediate and advanced PowerPoint in there too!

(One of the quite serious concerns at the pentagon is that we may soon lose major battles because of the military's reliance on ppt. The program causes users to organize and display information in particular ways, no matter what the actual truth of the information is. The notion that information does not get passed up/down the chain of command because it doesn't fit well into the ppt presentation keeps generals up at night.)

[clarice]

rse, you have irrational faith in the capacity of my memory.

[Robert Bell]

"I'll offer one - people with insurance from their current employer worry about "job lock" and loss of coverage due to pre-existing conditions if they switch jobs, and loss of coverage altogether if they lose their job. "

You are offering a means to an end here, but I'm not sure that there is a broad consensus among Republicans that reducing job lock is considered a primary end in itself.

[George S]

What is the point of bringing water to a dead plant?

[Soylent Red]

No one can work more than one day for any government without Powerpoint.

Three immutable laws of the PowerPoint Bureaucracy:

1. There is no reality unless it has been condensed into a slide deck. And reality doesn't give a damn about spell check.

2. The cooler your slides, the smarter you are, more deserving of funding, etc. Animations are good for at least another $250K. Find an Air Force guy to help you, if necessary.

3. Whenever possible, turn your back to the audience and actually read the slide to them. This increases its impact.

Corallary:

Whenever briefing a deck of slides, throw in lots of high bureaucratic impact words like "stovepipes", "rice bowls", "holistically", and "drill down".

[Soylent Red]

**Corollary**

[Cecil Turner]

Looks like the President wants to play politics with this thing (finding some format that makes the GOP look bad in front of the cameras). I don't think that's all that bad an idea, as long as someone shows up to the meeting with the ability to make a case. Eric Cantor could probably cover it as well as anyone. Must haves: tort reform; competition across state lines. Deal killers: public option; public funding for abortions; mandatory coverage. Main goal: make health care more affordable for all (by reducing cost). Main threat: creating a new government entitlement that raises government taxes and spending and further stifles economic growth.

Since there's zero appetite on the Democrat side for tort reform, the whole thing will fail . . . which is far better than the current proposed bill.

[toby928]

When asked by Ms. Couric if he would agree to discard the bill and start over, the president said he would not.

One would hope that Obama would meet with his enemies without preconditions and with an unclenched fist.

[Porchlight]

Whenever briefing a deck of slides, throw in lots of high bureaucratic impact words like "stovepipes", "rice bowls", "holistically", and "drill down".

Don't forget my favorite, "granular."

[Cecil Turner]

. . . throw in lots of high bureaucratic impact words like "stovepipes", "rice bowls" . . .

For a military briefing, work in "defeat in detail" (though actually knowing what that means is neither required nor desired).

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

Now I know what's on TOTUS. Teh Once's deck o' slides.

[Soylent Red]

One would hope that Obama would meet with his enemies without preconditions and with an unclenched fist.

Only the ones who want to kill us.

Priorities, man. Priorities.

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

Teh Once's deck o' slides

aka TODOS

[Fresh Air]

They should just send Cantor and McConnell with the simple message that they would like their $150 billion in savings first, then we can see about nuking the health insurance industry.

[Fresh Air]

Krugman says "America is not yet lost."

Have faith, Paul. Zero's working on it. Give him another 12 months or so.

[democratsarefascists]

Any Republican who shows up deserves to lose his or her seat.

[maryrose]

Rep Paul Ryan was on CNBC making an intelligent presentation about the fallacies of this bogus healthcare bill. He would be a good candidate to represent the republicans on TV. What's the price to pay if the repubs decide not to attend?

[MayBee]

The image of one guy fielding and responding to all of the questions from an assembled group inevitably creates the impression that the one guy is the equal of the total of the others, regardless of the substance of what is said.

Exactly, DoT.
Even the Brits don't allow that on Question time.
Republicans meet as equals, with equal give and take, equal time, equal stagecraft, or they don't meet.
He is not their high school principal.

[Jane]

I would strongly urge the Republicans to select a single person to speak for all of them--Paul Ryan would be a fine choice.

I love that idea. The other one is to go and keep saying: "Mr. President you would promise we would work on creating jobs, don't you think we should talk about that?"

[MikeS]

What's wrong with the HCR bills must be removed from them. New deficit spending, new waste, new pork, new taxes, massive new bureaucracies. Instead driving down medical costs they drive up medical costs.

Worse, the concentration on this $2.5 trillion boondoggle, is preventing real reform. As the government flounders on this folly instead of governing, investors, risk takers, and job creators are loosing what little confidence they had.

[E. Nigma]

"Mr. President, tear down this Health Care Reform Bill!"

Or something like that.

And don't forget synergy. That makes the powerpoint world go 'round. There are always important synergies to be realized.

[Mike G in Corvallis]

President Obama wants to paint the Republicans as "the Party of No" ... but what he may not understand is that there's nothing wrong with being the Party of No when something stupid is in the works.

When a six-year-old boy ties a cape around his neck and wants to jump off the roof of the garage because he thinks he can fly like Superman … his parents say “No!”

When a thirteen-year-old girl wants to get a permanent tattoo of some vampire from Twilight … her parents say “No!”

When the kids come home from an evening of trick-or-treating and want to eat their entire haul of candy in one sitting … their parents say “No!”

The Republicans are the Party of No because they are the Party of Adult Supervision.