Sir Change-a-Lot continues to amaze with his novel interpretation of teh stupid. Here’s his latest brain fart on the mutant golem that is his so-called Health Care Reform:
“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.
Mr. Obama challenged Republicans to attend the meeting with their plans for lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Republican leaders said they welcomed the opportunity and called on Democrats to start the debate from scratch, which the president said he would not do….
When asked by Ms. Couric if he would agree to discard the bill and start over, the president said he would not. The starting point, aides said, would be with the proposals that passed the House and Senate.
Let me see if I’m missing anything:
- Run your campaign on progressive, genuine health care reform to get all the progressives all fired up about how hopey-changey your tenure as President is going to be.
- Initiate the process by immediately conceeding everything audacious enough to really make a difference: single payer, universal health care, taking on the insurance industry.
- Once you’ve given away all the potential cards for negotiating you might have had on hand, proceed to invite the Republicans to be part of the process. Fail to notice for months that all they want is to run down the clock and prevent anything from actually happening. Keep trying, while making yourself look like a pitiful fool at the mercy of the opponent you just trounced in the ’08 elections.
- Ignore the fact that you actually have the majority to pass significant legislature without letting the Republicans piss it to pieces. Insist on bipartisanship even though your partner continues to spit in your eye. A perhaps noble, but certainly pointless gesture that might buy you some brownie points with a few corrupt Beltway insiders, but renders the average Democrat wondering what the fuck you’re thinking.
- Negotiate sweetheart deals with big pharma behind closed doors, ensure them that their exhorbitant pricing will remain unaffected by anything that might come to pass.
- Now hand over the whole process to major league assholes like Ben Nelson and Max Baucus, basically the Democratic Party equivalents of toxic assets. Let them destroy what remains of genuine reform. Sprinkle generously with compromises to accomodate Joe Lieberman’s permanent hissy fits, and serve.
- Send out Rahm Emanuel to run interference whenever progressives start to point out that this is *not* the way to do it; let him call them retarded while he ensures that people like Ben Nelson get their sweetheart deals *and* are rewarded with money from the DNC for sabotaging the process.
- Proudly claim in public that you got 95 percent of what you wanted with the watered-down senate plan that may not even be able to pass because the party you so ineptly lead somehow managed to lose Ted Kennedy’s bullet-proof seat in MA to a tea-bagging nude model with a pick-up truck. A bit like looking at your ex-wife’s restraining order and commenting how this is exactly the kind of relationship you want, with openness and frank expression of opinions…
- Fail to realize or acknowledge that you’ve completely blown it; pretend that going back to Square One and renegotiating what’s left with the Republicans is really like asking the burglar if he’d like the PIN code to your bank card as well.
I’m not sure why I’m supposed to be excited about the prospects of another round of this. When he’s done, I assume Obama will have finagled a system under which Aetna has direct access to my bank acocunt, while in return my kids will be allowed a single emergency room visit, provided they bring their own supplies… The current system is looking better and better — as with all good things involving the Democrats these days, we’re really better served if they don’t even try.
