Many pundits thought before the meeting that Republicans would come as themselves, as Republicans. Imagine the great surprise of the pundits when the Republicans arrived and were very polite to the president. The Republicans did not tell the president that they could not engage seriously with him because he is not truly president since he was not born in the U.S. What a relief. The Republicans refrained from calling President Obama a Muslim, a Nazi, a communist or as socialist. That was nice. The Republicans did not even say that Obama is more worried about terrorists than he is about the welfare of Americans. Wonderful.
The Republicans did none of these things. They were extremely deferential to the president and called him "Mister President." Wow! The Republicans behaved as normal human beings! So the pundit chorus decided that the Republicans won the match.
Ridiculous! The Republicans were polite on the surface, but they all came to tear down everything he proposed, regardless of its merits. They did it with the simple phrase, "let's start all over." Many health subtopics were discussed. But in each case, the Republican speaker wound up saying "let's start all over."
Boehner brought a stack of papers representing the healthcare bill, not to discuss anything in it, but to say that this is a 2700-page bill and is therefore a dangerous bill. Like all the other Republicans, he said "let's start all over." He followed this by saying let's go "step by step."
As I was listening to him I was wondering what should be the first step? Deciding how many pages the bill should be? Did he want to spend a month, maybe more, discussing the number of pages? What was the ideal number of pages he would like?
Was he willing to compromise on the number of pages or is this a matter of principle? If he did not like the way the page discussion was going would he filibuster it?
The pundits are wrong. They think, as they always do, in terms of a contest between Democrats and Republicans. This is not what the Summit was about. One goal of the Summit was to change the subject from Scott-Brown-induced Democratic defeatism to the crying need for healthcare reform. The Summit accomplished this in a big way.
A second goal is to push the House and Senate Democrats to work together to pass a good healthcare bill. They must do this on their own. This Summit made it abundantly clear that the Democrats will receive no help at all from Republicans. It's obvious today that the Democratic legislators have received this message loud and clear and are eager to act.
During the Summit, the Democrats did not like the Republican message of "let's start all over." But Democrats should adopt the same message: "Let's start by assuming that the Republicans will fight us every step of the way. Let's negotiate primarily with our own members in order to achieve the best healthcare bill possible. Let's start all over."
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