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I think Obama’s planned televised bipartisan meeting on health care reform is a waste of time. Republicans had months to actively get involved with shaping the legislation and chose not to. They decided that the smart political move was to oppose health care reform at every turn. The chances of getting Republican buy-in at this point seems to be zero, so the only reason for the meeting is PR purposes. Republican Rep. Tom Price (R-GA 6), on the other hand, knows it will be empty PR.
Of course, the reason that the bipartisan meeting is going to be nothing more than hollow PR is because Republicans like Price have chosen to make sure it can’t be anything but hollow PR. The Republican leader has made it clear that they have zero intention to vote for health care reform. If they are unwilling to reach a compromise with Democrats, and have made that clear, any attempt to reach out to them will accomplish nothing on a policy or legislative front. You can’t reach a bipartisan agreement if one party does not want to reach a compromise. It takes two to tango.
It does not matter if Obama is sincere in his outreach to Republicans. Since the Republicans don’t intend to vote for reform, any bipartisan meeting by definition can’t accomplish anything more than PR. Price and I agree that the meeting will be just a “hollow PR blitz,” but Price is the one who has the power to make it something more. Unlike me, Price could use it is a chance to advance the solutions he actually wants to become law. Let’s just say I’m more than envious. Of course, I shouldn’t be angry–it’s not like it is Price’s job as a legislator to actually write legislation.
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I’m not so pessimistic on this. Hollow PR can move people and change positions. Shelby’s hold on…everything…got taken off most things in response to a bit of sunlight.
I don’t know what the genius chess club at the WH will do with this meeting, or how the GOP is going to play it, but I think it is premature to toss the whole thing off as empty/worthless.
i don’t see any sign of either party leadership wanting to work with the other. kucinich’s amendment to permit states to implement single payer systems was passed in committee with a bipartisan vote but stripped by the house leadership in the final bill. didn’t even get a vote on the house floor.
Obama is like the kid in the school yard the rest of the kids blackballed and refuse to play with because he cheats. Obambi goes home and complain’s mommy that “Nobody will play with me”. Why don’t they respect you little Obambi? Could it be because you have NO CREDIBILITY?
Hollow PR is about the only thing the administration does. Look look at the KSM trial where the admin very clearly said it was just a show trial – saying whether KSM is found guilty or not guilty, they’d keep him locked up anyway, which most definitely doesn’t put US justice in a good light. The same goes with this so-called summit – if Obama is sticking with the bills, what’s there to discuss except to put on a display of political theater. There’s just an endless list of things where Obama makes cosmetic changes from Bush or advocates for corporatist legislation while calling it progressive.
It’s good that Obama is going ahead with the debate without the Republicans. It’ll give him time to remind Americans that the Republicans don’t care about their health, and since nearly all such facts are censored from the news the presidential speech is one of the last, best places to tell the truth from. The speech will not be hollow; the American people want to know the truth, but you have to stand up and give it to them because most of them won’t or can’t discern it for themselves. Obama’s speech will be like the rest of Obama’s hope and change…a small kernel of corn or two in the steaming mess that is propaganda these days. The people, when they see that he was right after they start getting well, will cradle that corn lovingly until they can water it and grow a whole field of corn…or the corn will get digested and the public will just learn the mess that the news networks and syndicates and Republicans tell them.
“It’s good that Obama is going ahead with the debate without the Republicans. It’ll give him time to remind Americans that the Republicans don’t care about their health”
This bill is rightly so unpopular that Republicans are doing the politically smart thing.
The D-Party, OTOH, pretty much hung itself. They produced a corporatist Bill to pay off their campaign funders–and lost the voting public.
Obama and the D-Party now have a choice.
They can take this announcement from the Rs that they will not support the corporatist Bill and produce a less corporatist bill more in the public interest–and gain back some of the voting public
OR
they can put the corporatist Bill through, own it lock, stock and barrel, and take the political consequences.
We’re at a fork in the road with the D-Party. We’ll see how they go.
As far as “hollow PR” is concerned, I think we’re way beyond that point. The only people buying the hollow PR are Obamabots and D-Party cultists–they need *more* PR?