While Obama Still Strives For Unattainable Bipartisan Consensus, GOP Sticks To Delegitimizing His Presidency & To Pure Obstructionism

This morning-- in a discussion on CNN about Sarah Palin's scrawled notes on her hand at the teabagger convention-- former Reagan advisor Ed Rollins mentioned that the Republican Party is an opposition party and its job isn't to get things done for the American people in Washington but to stop President Obama from getting anything done. This harkens back, somewhat more politely, to what shrill reactionaries like Rush Limbaugh and Jon Kyl were screeching from the day Obama was overwhelmingly elected president with an electoral vote of 265-173, most of the 173 being former breakaway Confederate states plus much of the Mormon West. From the very beginning, the obstructionist Republicans have done everything they could to demonize Obama in the minds of the most gullible Americans-- and they have quite the media empire to facilitate just that-- and to undermine his authority with outlandish claims that his presidency is somehow "illegitimate."

A cautious moderate, Obama has played into their treachery with his quest for a kind of bipartisanship they had already made clear they would never participate in. Yesterday, amidst all the hullabaloo over the Saints-- representing Blue America-- kicking the ass of the favored Colts-- representing Red America-- Obama announced a bipartisan forum for February 25 to sit down with leaders of both parties to work out the parameters for a healthcare reform bill. If it takes two to tango, this conference was D.O.A.

With the GOP united against the Democratic bill, Mr. Obama said Sunday he would ask Republicans "to put their ideas on the table." The half-day meeting will be Feb. 25 and broadcast live, the White House said.

"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," the president told CBS in an interview broadcast Sunday.

In polling after the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, it seemed clear that voters there want a better healthcare bill than the corporate-friendly bill in the Senate. Republicans choose to interpret Brown's election as though the voters (nationwide) are demanding even worse solutions than what the conservative Senate has hammered out. Republican reaction to Obama's invitation to work together was predictable-- and very much in line both with what Limbaugh said about wanting the president to fail and with what Rollins said today about not solving problems, just keeping the Democrats from solving them. In both cases, the underlying goal is to make the situation worse for Americans so that they react in anger against Democrats.

When the Republicans tried this after they caused the Great Depression and FDR was swept into office with majorities in both houses of Congress, FDR and the Democrats were deft enough to turn the obstructionism against Republicans. The GOP's 270-164 seat majority in the House in 1928 sank to a 218-216 majority in 1930 and then turned around when FDR won the presidency in 1932 to a Democratic landslide everywhere in the country, the GOP losing 101 seats in the House to give the Democrats a 313-117 majority. The 117 Republicans embarked on an identical program of hysterical obstructionism and name-calling. But FDR and his team-- unlike Obama's inept Chicago team led by the blustery incompetent Rahm Emanuel-- knew how to deal with the treacherous Republicans. (Perhaps if David Plouffe calls the shots instead of Emanuel, the Democrats' electoral fortunes will start looking more like 1934 and less like 1994.) In the 1934 midterms the GOP lost 14 more seats, and in 1936-- FDR's first re-election-- the GOP, still hell-bent on obstructionism, was dealt another mighty blow from the public. With 15 more seats lost, itts 103 minority was turned into an 88 seat rump. A similar pattern was taking place in the Senate, where the former GOP majority was gradually cut down to a total of 17 seats by 1936.

Both John Boehner, the GOP House leader, and Miss Mitch McConnell, the Senate leader, answered the president's call for bipartisan solutions with more hysterical right-wing posturing and extremist ideology. Boehner:

The American people have overwhelmingly rejected both of the job-killing trillion-dollar government takeover of health care bills passed by the House and Senate. The problem with the Democrats' health care bills is not that the American people don't understand them; the American people do understand them, and they don't like them.

"The best way to start on real, bipartisan reform would be to scrap those bills and focus on the kind of step-by-step improvements that will lower health care costs and expand access. The House Republican alternative, which would lower premiums by up to 10 percent while increasing access for Americans without health insurance, would be a solid starting point. I look forward to discussing these issues with the Democratic Leadership and the President."

The GOP "solution," as embodied in the "roadmap" prepared by Paul Ryan: gutting Medicare and Social Security and giving the wealthiest Americans bigger tax cuts in the hopes that some may trickle down to the rest of the country someday, although this has never worked in the history of mankind. And McConnell was just as discouraging of any kind of real intention of working together for the American people:

If we are to reach a bipartisan consensus, the White House can start by shelving the current health spending bill, and with it their goal of slashing a half trillion dollars from Medicare and raising a half trillion in new taxes. The American people want lower costs, not Medicare cuts and tax increases. Setting these proposals aside would be a sign that the administration and Democrats in Congress are listening to the country and are truly interested in a bipartisan approach.

“The fact is Senate Republicans held hundreds of town halls and met with their constituents across the country last year on the need for health care reform, outlining ideas for the step-by-step approach that Americans have asked for. And we know there are a number of issues with bipartisan support that we can start with when the 2,700-page bill is put on the shelf.”

Wall Street shill Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA-$3,677,585) speaks for the whole obstructionist GOP when he says that it doesn't matter that Obama won the presidency and that America elected more Democrats than Republicans in the House and in the Senate. If Obama wants GOP help to pass healthcare, he has to throw out all Democratic ideas and adopt the failed and rejected reactionary Republican ideology, which basicallyamounts to a Law of the Jungle (real death panels) approach:

After going it alone on health care reform for nearly a year, President Obama has decided he wants to bring Republicans into the conversation. Here’s the problem: unless the President and Speaker Pelosi are willing to scrap their government take over and hit the reset button, there’s not much to talk about.

Republicans believe the status quo is unacceptable, but so is any health reform package that spends money we don’t have or raises taxes on small businesses and working families in a recession. To that point, House Republicans have offered the only plan , that will lower health care costs, which is what the President said was the goal at the start of this debate.

Whether you're marking the birthday of Renoir, Meher Baba, Zeppo Marx, George Harrison or Carrot Top on February 25th, it's highly unlikely you will be celebrating any kind of a breakthrough that will make the healthcare system in America better for anyone other than the big insurance companies, which have spent so many millions of dollars bribing politicians and lying to the public.


Obama Replies To Childish GOP Ultimatums

This is how Robert Gibbs responded to the obstructionist letter the White House got from Boehner and Cantor today on behalf of the Republican House caucus:

The President is adamant that we seize this historic moment to pass meaningful health insurance reform legislation. He began this process by inviting Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House on March 5 of last year, and he’s continued to work with both parties in crafting the best possible bill. He’s been very clear about his support for the House and Senate bills because of what they achieve for the American people: putting a stop to insurance company abuses, extending coverage to millions of hardworking Americans, getting control of rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reducing the deficit.

The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He’s open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny. What he will not do, however, is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small business counting on it. The recent news that a major insurer plans to raise premiums for some customers by as much as 39 percent is a stark reminder of the consequences of doing nothing.