GOP Continues to talk out of both sides of the mouth area
My conservative friends (on Facebook) have whined and moaned about the conservative point of view “not being invited to the table” on healthcare legislation. So the President extends a personal invitation and this is the response:
GOP cool to Obama call for two-party health talks – Yahoo! News
But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said his earlier efforts to reach out to Republicans “did not result in any serious follow through to work together in a bipartisan fashion.”
My guess is that the GOP doesn’t want to be on TV with the President again after the ass-whooping he gave them in the live Q&A a couple of weeks ago (yes, I know I’m very very very late to the game on this amazing video):
If you haven’t watched this, you should. Regardless of your views about the President or the GOP. AMAZING political history being made with TV cameras rolling. Listen to how the President responds. Calm. Measured. Knows his stuff. The GOP, in my opinion, looks outplayed and they are showing that they are sore losers, can’t govern, can’t (or are unwilling to) solve problems and that they aren’t bipartisan in the least. Their talk of bipartisan work can only be called one thing: lies.
I’d love it if Palin was the GOP nominee against Obama. None of her crib notes would help against a smarter foe (sorry I cannot get the clip to wait for a user to initiate the playing of it):
Above video from this post on Foxnews.com. Unfortunately the above video doesn’t address her amateur crib notes. This one shows Fox “News” “anchors” helping the “Palin is just folksy” narrative. It’s painful:
Or her hypocrisy around use of the word “retard”. Dems do it: they should resign. Rush Limbaugh does it: he was just joking:
Also. Her reality is clearly not The Reality.
GOP, when you gonna give it up and actually govern? o
- 02.08.2010
- 12 Responses »
- GOP hypocrisy, GOP lies, healthcare, politics
- daily
The GOP’s positions on these bills are documented in the Congressional Record. If the President wants to adopt those ideas, he can say so. If he wants to drop things they dislike, he can say that too. If he wonders if some particular revisions would get their votes, he can pick up the phone and ask.
He doesn’t need a summit to work with the GOP. He needs a summit to get them to sit silently while he criticizes them, prevented from calling him out by respect for the dignity of his office. His legislative allies can’t get it done on the level playing fields of the House and Senate, so now he wants to play on the unlevel field of the White House.
He’s the President. He should lead. We are at an impasse over proposals and ideas that are thoroughly understood. Instead of attacking, he should propose some way forward that will be acceptable to the opposition, or announce that the bill won’t get done and he intends to campaign on his opponents’ errors in the fall. This above-it-all, I’m-so-evenhanded posturing fools no one. It wastes our time and exhausts our patience. Enough.
Here’s the problem: GOP is failing to lead on ideas. Period. I think that forcing a sit down will illustrate that in ways the PR wing of the GOP (Fox “News”, Talk Radio, etc.) can’t explain away or minimize.
The reality of governing is that you can’t hate the government you were elected to serve. I think Obama wants the GOP to stand up for the potshots and blatant lies they told last summer (and continue to tell in the case of Bachmann) . Face to face. Brilliant tactic. Especially after he mopped the floor with people like Chaffetz (R-UT), who denied funding for full-body x-ray machines at airports. The kind that would have detected the crotch bomber. The untenable position of arguing out of both sides of the mouth is about to be shot down with video cameras running.
One could argue that Obama is directly ceding to GOP demands AND calling them out. It’s about time the President started playing hardball.
Then let the President play hardball, and stop pretending he’s Mr. Bipartisan. Right now he’s framing a debate over who is most sincerely bipartisan, which is stupid, because neither of them are. The whole thing is a distraction from the real issues, and an irritant to those accused of not having ideas.
Seriously. The President is supposed to lead. He’s supposed to deal with the fact that people disagree with him. It’s a tough job. None of this is new. The President always has the initiative, and right now Obama is using it to complain that his opponents have the same opinions they had twelve months ago. Well, no kidding Barack, and have you noticed that recently those opinions have been winning elections in conservative bastions like New Jersey, and freakin’ MASSACHUSETTS? So far the only strategy we’ve seen from this guy is to repeat himself no matter. It isn’t going to get anything done.
I don’t think that’s what the President is doing at all. I think he’s trying to quiet the noisy PR machine that the GOP has complete mastery over and do so in a definitive way. It may be window dressing in terms of actually being bipartisan, but at least we’ll have honesty out in the open, as opposed to lies perpetuated by the media machine.
If the Democrats can’t broadcast the “truth” while holding the Presidency — the strongest rhetorical outpost in the world — maybe they don’t have the truth. Or, they are spectacularly incompetent. Maybe both.
They certainly won’t make any progress by blaming other people for their own failures.
nobody : I think most would agree with the assessment that the GOP simply won’t play if they’re not going to be allowed to win, which is generally how they roll. Boehner and Cantor both called for reconciliation to be taken off the table but I don’t hear the American public calling for that. They’re requesting it as a show of good faith to their party but it has nothing to do with what Americans want.
I for one would like to see Obama do just what you mentioned: announce the bill simply won’t get done because the GOP refuses to step across an aisle that the people are asking them to step across. I am highly annoyed at Obama and the Democrats lack of balls but taking reconciliation off the table and starting over on a bill we pandered to the right to get passed anyway just seems ludicrous…
I liked Ezra Klein’s recent article in WaPo, to wit:
At this point, I don’t think it’s well understood how many of the GOP’s central health-care policy ideas have already been included as compromises in the health-care bill. But one good way is to look at the GOP’s “Solutions for America” homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them — yes, you read that right — are in the Senate health-care bill.
You can read the whole thing here: http://tinyurl.com/y93863b
I think this really pinpoints the GOP point-of-view: Even when they get what they want, they dissemble and whinge about not being invited to the table because they are more interested in fighting aginst the Democrats than they are at getting anything done.
Sorry, I forgot to add this:
Also, I liked the idea floated by Doris Kearns Goodwin on The Daily Show. Let ‘em filibuster. Let them stand up there are read recipes and so forth so the American people can see exactly why Health Care Reform, or anything else, isn’t passing.
This says what I’m trying to say:
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/02/09/obama-calls-gop-bluff-on-health-care-reform/
Gibbs: “The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process. . . . ”
Translation: You can do what I want anyway you like.
This may play with the Democratic base, but the larger electorate sees through it.
Ugh did you see the clip of Chris Wallace promoting his interview with Palin on Imus’ radio show?:
Imus: When you interview her, will she be sitting on your lap?
Wallace: One can only hope.
Baaarf. I don’t really expect anything from Imus in the way of plain human decency but did Wallace really have to respond in kind?
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201002040018
Did not see that.
Bleah.