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By Bill Altreuter

As I understand it at yesterday's health care summit Lamar! Alexander laid out the Republican's position as follows: start from scratch, and do not propose a bill that does not have substantial Republican support. In essence what he is saying is that the Republicans in Congress demand to be the ones who control the ultimate outcome. In view of the fact that they are the minority in both houses you'd think that they'd realize that they are not exactly negotiating from strength, but that's the point: as long as they act like they have all the leverage they actually do have all the leverage. This is how they play. When George W. Bush was appointed president he acted like he had been given an electoral mandate, and Congressional Democrats went along with it. Now Obama-- and Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi-- are acting like Obama didn't just win the Presidency with the largest popular vote in history. This notion that the two present versions of the Health Care bill which are sitting out there is unpopular with the general public impresses me as creative lie, built like a Frankenstein monster out of bits and pieces of the truth. Some people don't like the legislation because they don't think it does enough; some people don't like the way it goes about doing what it does; and certainly there are people who don't like the bill because they are opposed to government involvement in this field. That said, from what I've read, it appears that most people agree that something has to be done, and that the core things that the legislation does are things that they want to see done. Yielding to the Lamar! Alexander and his ilk on this point would to caving in and admitting that Obama can't govern. Since Democratic Congressional leadership just spent the eight years of the Bush Administration demonstrating that it can't accomplish anything it falls to Obama. I believe he has the tools to accomplish this, but I have yet to see any willingness on his part to do use those tools. Maybe Rahm Emanuel needs to have a talk with him.

Full post as published by Outside Counsel on February 26, 2010 (boomark / email).