It's not a good idea for Republicans to accept President Barack Obama's invitation to a "bipartisan" health care summit, because it would not advance acceptable health care reform. The only thing it likely would advance would be Obama's propaganda message -- and, thus, his socialist agenda.
Everyone knows Obama wouldn't be considering such a move if the American people had not so resoundingly rejected Obamacare.
From the very beginning, he has approached this issue more as a dictator than one interested in hearing genuine input from the other side. Nor has he shown good faith, having broken his cynical promise to televise the debates on C-SPAN and having misrepresented his plan in a number of particulars.
When called on the C-SPAN pledge, he glibly replied that most of the process has been televised in regular sessions of Congress and committee hearings, knowing full well that's not what anyone understood him to mean when he made his promise.
He has been as highhanded and dishonest in dealing with this issue as he has been with any other, which is quite a mouthful. He has ridiculed Republicans for their alleged obstruction and for not offering ideas of their own, when it was Republicans who first called for bipartisan talks last May and who did offer alternative plans, which Obama summarily rejected.
He looked us straight in the eye and told us, disingenuously, that in his plan, there would be no federal funding for abortion, no rationing, no interference in the doctor-patient relationship, no forcing people out of their private plans, no bill that was not budget-neutral, no single-payer plan and no decrease in patient choice with his public option.
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As he waltzed unannounced into a news conference after failing to make himself available for one for some seven months, he proceeded, as usual, to decry "the political posturing that often paralyzes this town." I wonder whether he considers himself a participant in such posturing. After all, no modern president has ever engaged in the kind of incessant sniping at his predecessor or his opponents that Obama has. None has failed to take responsibility for his own actions the way Obama has. None has debased a State of the Union address to "call out" his political opponents.
If he wouldn't even square with us in his short statement on the proposed "bipartisan" health care summit, why should we expect him to in the meeting itself?
When he announced that he is "going to continue to seek the best ideas from either party," what were other members of his administration saying?
One White House official told The Washington Post, "This is not starting over. Don't make any mistake about that." And Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that Obama will "absolutely not" reset the legislative process. "I think he sees this as a step to actually accelerating the process forward," she said. "He wants a bill at his desk, and he sees this as kind of closing the loop and let's go."
He views this, just as he did his appearance at the Republican retreat, as an opportunity to use Republicans as a prop, to depict them as partisan obstructers of his magnanimous plan to save our health care system.
Obama says the American people are demanding bipartisanship and "a seriousness of purpose that transcends petty politics."
I don't think so. And I don't think his primary concern is what the American people want. If he were truly listening to the people, he would hear their rejection of Obamacare and the rest of his socialist agenda. He would heed the freshly released Rasmussen poll showing that 61 percent of Americans want him to drop health care reform. Yes, the American people have spoken, but what they're demanding is not bipartisanship. Rather, they want him to cease and desist from his socialist schemes.
Indeed, bipartisan compromise in this case would likely be very detrimental to America's best interests. What Obama means by bipartisanship is that he be allowed to proceed with his plan to expand government control over health care with the fewest possible cosmetic changes necessary to con Republicans into signing on -- a ploy right out of the Saul Alinsky street agitation playbook.
Any bipartisan action on this bill would necessarily result in further government control over health care and move us ever closer to a single-payer system. Yet the only way to improve our health care system is to roll back, not increase government's role. It follows, then, that no reform at all would be vastly superior to so-called bipartisan reform.
Seriously, does anyone believe that Obama will agree to any plan that includes market reforms? Of course not. Republicans -- on behalf of the American people -- should just say "no!"
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