Obama's Fake Bipartisanship
Eric Alterman
The DailyBeast
Is the president delusional to hope for bipartisanship in the face of Republican demagoguery over health care? Far from it, says Eric Alterman. Obama’s using a strategy honed in last fall’s election.
Barack Obama says he still hopes the health-care bill Congress eventually passes will be “bipartisan."
This despite the widespread impression virtually everywhere, no matter what the White House gives away, that Republicans are not planning on taking “yes” for an answer. Just as they did in 1994, Republicans, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel appears to have finally realized, have “made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health-care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health-insurance problems that Americans face every day.”
Barely a “handful,” notes White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, appear “interested in the type of comprehensive reform that so many people believe is necessary to ensure the principles and the goals that the president has laid out.”
Obama can certainly go to the country and swear he gave this bipartisan thing every chance but these folks are, um, more interested in defeating him “than solving the health-insurance problems that Americans face every day.”
Indeed, even ranking Senate Finance Committee member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who indulges in Sarah Palinesque nonsense about “death panels,” has acknowledged that he will likely refuse to vote in favor of a bill that gives him everything he wants if he “can’t sell my product to more Republicans.” And Republicans, like former McCain flack Michael Goldfarb, say they plan to demagogue the bill no matter what “because it’s really complicated… It would be political malpractice if Republicans didn’t exploit that confusion and use it to find their way out of the wilderness.”
(Continued here.)
The DailyBeast
Is the president delusional to hope for bipartisanship in the face of Republican demagoguery over health care? Far from it, says Eric Alterman. Obama’s using a strategy honed in last fall’s election.
Barack Obama says he still hopes the health-care bill Congress eventually passes will be “bipartisan."
This despite the widespread impression virtually everywhere, no matter what the White House gives away, that Republicans are not planning on taking “yes” for an answer. Just as they did in 1994, Republicans, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel appears to have finally realized, have “made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health-care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health-insurance problems that Americans face every day.”
Barely a “handful,” notes White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, appear “interested in the type of comprehensive reform that so many people believe is necessary to ensure the principles and the goals that the president has laid out.”
Obama can certainly go to the country and swear he gave this bipartisan thing every chance but these folks are, um, more interested in defeating him “than solving the health-insurance problems that Americans face every day.”
Indeed, even ranking Senate Finance Committee member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who indulges in Sarah Palinesque nonsense about “death panels,” has acknowledged that he will likely refuse to vote in favor of a bill that gives him everything he wants if he “can’t sell my product to more Republicans.” And Republicans, like former McCain flack Michael Goldfarb, say they plan to demagogue the bill no matter what “because it’s really complicated… It would be political malpractice if Republicans didn’t exploit that confusion and use it to find their way out of the wilderness.”
(Continued here.)
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