Friday, January 22, 2010

a fool's errand

That's what it would be to draft a new bill to woo Republicans. Krugman:
So, House Democrats have a choice: do they pass the Senate bill, or do they go back to the drawing board and spend several months cobbling together a plan that’s worse in almost every dimension, generating thousands of stories about hapless Democrats — and almost surely find that Senate Republicans block the new plan, too.

The GOP is not interested in working with Democrats, only with subverting them. They've already said their strategy is obstruction, they've being using that strategy for 3 years now, and they believe they're winning with it. Why would they suddenly vote to fix healthcare now?

Reid's recent comment about Olympia Snowe's duplicity should be the lesson of the decade for Democrats. They gave her everything she asked for from weakening the mandate penalties to stripping the co-ops, the Medicare buy-in, and the opt-outs, even the public option itself, only to watch her vote to filibuster anyway.

Remember, one the GOP's main arguments against the public option was that it would be better than private insurance, and that's a bad thing:
Nevertheless, Republican senators argued that the public option would bankrupt the country and lead to a single-payer system. "Government is not a competitor. Government is a predator," said Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).

To the GOP, the worst thing that could happen is that something gets fixed while the Democrats are in charge.

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