Before Scott Brown won his Massachusetts Senate seat and deprived the Dems of their supermajority, the President was content to ignore Republican ideas on health reform. In fact, he routinely suggested that the GOP had no useful ideas to offer.
Now Obama is singing a different tune. He suddenly wants to ”reach across the aisle” and listen to those Republicans he so recently shut out out of reform talks. Oh, and he has finally decided to honor his promise to put health care discussions on television:
President Barack Obama is planning to host a televised meeting with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on health care reform … Obama said he wants to ‘look at the Republican ideas that are out there.’
He revealed this new-found interest in bipartisanship in an interview with Katie Couric during CBS’s Super Bowl pre-game show Sunday. At the risk of seeming cynical, I don’t think this any more sincere than anything else he has done since he arrived in D.C.
He’s obviously planning to use this TV performance to set up a narrative for the midterms in which he and the Dems reached out to the Republicans and pulled back a bloody stump. Here’s a clip from interview. Would you buy a used car from this man?
It would appear that I’m not alone in my skepticisim. Michelle Malkin asks:
After a year’s worth of closed backroom meetings and midnight holiday weekend legislative sessions in which Republicans had severely curtailed ability to offer amendments, President Obama wants to invite them to a televised health care summit to talk about the GOP alternatives he said didn’t exist?
And Karl over at the Green Room points out that Obama and his congressional accomplices have already said they have no intention of starting over, which is what the Republicans want to do.
Moreover, Obama is insisting that the final product must be very similar to the House and Senate boondoggles. So, what’s the point in inviting the GOP to discuss bills they have already rejected?
It’s obviously just another scam, another cheap PR stunt. Obama, Reid, Pelosi, et al are congenitally incapable of playing it straight.
Comments 1
Not only is it a “dog and pony” show I believe it is an effort to “box” in Republicans. After poisoning the term “Health Care Reform” to the point where a majority of Americans can’t stomach the thought of anything about it right now, he is attempting to place them in a dilema. Go to the meetings and risk being labeled a “traitor”, RHINO, or Beltway hack. Refuse to go and he can say that he “exposed” them and was right that they are the Party of “NO.”
Posted 09 Feb 2010 at 3:03 am ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
[…] Obama’s “health care summit” just meant for show?. I vote a big yes. The guy spent the past year saying, “I won. Shut up. The GOP has no plan; they just want the […]
Post a Comment