"The proposal to televise a February 25 health-care summit with Republicans grew out of a conclusion by top White House advisers that Obama had bested House GOP leaders during a 90-minute televised discussion in Baltimore last month," according to the Washington Post.
We thought ObamaCare was pronounced dead with the election of Scott Brown, so why are Republicans even discussing it? The American people had won the victory against this key plank in the Obama socialist agenda. Now, weak and unprincipled Republicans, as they have so many times before, may rush in to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Only after it had become abundantly clear that ObamaCare would never pass, after it was pronounced dead by the Massachusetts voters, Barack Obama asked for a do-over, a mulligan, in the form of this supposedly "bi-partisan" televised healthcare summit.
Bi-partisan? Poppycock. It does not require a MENSA IQ to figure out that Barack Obama did not call this meeting to listen to Republican ideas. As Rush Limbaugh said, it's a "trap," an attempt to paint Republicans as the "Party of No" and lay the groundwork to bring ObamaCare back from the dead.
That's why the obvious response to Obama's request for a televised healthcare summit should have received an immediate and firm "no," but it's apparently not so obvious to some of our Republicans legislators because, they're falling for the trap.
Someone needs to save these Republicans from themselves. The New York Times called this televised health care summit "a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse."
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Political impasse? Give me a break. There is no impasse. The American people don't want government-run health care and Barack Obama and the Democrats don't have the votes to pass it. It should be dead.
So why are we going to continue the debate? And why are Republicans allowing it, enabling it. There is absolutely nothing Republicans can gain from this meeting.
Obama will use the occasion, with a little help from his spin-doctors at CBS, MSNBC, ABC and CNN, to make Republicans look bad and/or Republicans will actually offer concessions and put ObamaCare back on the table. Both of those outcomes are losing propositions for the American people.
Here's what Republicans should say: With all due respect, Mr. President, the American people have already rendered their verdict on ObamaCare. Further discussion would be pointless, fruitless and an insult to the people who elected all of us to public office.
Furthermore, Mr. President, we need not remind you that members of your party literally shut Republicans out of the process, wrote the House and Senate versions of ObamaCare during closed-door meetings with liberal special interests, and, in opposition to the will of the American people, pulled every legislative shenanigan in the book to shove ObamaCare down our throats. As such, your offer of bi-partisanship, after having lost, is laughable.
We will not be puppets for your little political theater. If you're really serious about reforming the health care system, meet with members of your own party and tell them to start advancing some ideas that will actually make health care more affordable and more available to the American people such as tort reform and allowing companies to sell health insurance across state lines. We'll support those measures.
If members of your party are unwilling to go down that road, you can still work with us to advance real healthcare reform. We'll simply agree to wait until November, when Republicans have recaptured the majority, and place real healthcare reform legislation on your desk.
That's what they should say. Will they have the courage? All indications look bad.
Greta Van Susteren of Fox News asked House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, whether or not he was going to attend the Obama healthcare summit. Boehner tap-danced. He never answered the question.
And yet, he did acknowledge the idiocy of the entire exercise. At one point he acknowledged posing the question, "Why are we going to talk about a bill that can't pass?" He also expressed reservations that he might "walk into some trap."
Indeed, Congressman Boehner, this televised healthcare summit is a "trap" and a scam designed to make you and the rest of the Republicans look bad. Since you're going into this trap to "talk about a bill that can't pass," why go?
Moreover, why take the risk that your efforts might actually give new life to ObamaCare and give Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid the opportunity to start the whole sordid process over again? Americans have had enough of the secret meetings, the back-room deals, the legislative shenanigans and the repeated attempts to shove ObamaCare down the throats of the American people.
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