From TheHill.com:
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration remains committed to drawing Republican support for the bill, particularly in the Senate.
“I don’t know why we would short-circuit that now,” Gibbs told reporters.
He said the White House believes some Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee “are still working in a constructive way to get reform through the Senate and ultimately to the president’s desk.”
Some Republicans, like who? Chuck Grassley, who told TheHill.com today, without a trace of irony, that he is still interested in “working together” with Democrats to get health care reform passed?
“I’ve said all year that something as big and important as health care legislation should have broad-based support,” Grassley said in a statement to The Hill.
“So far, no one has developed that kind of support, either in Congress or at the White House. That doesn’t mean we should quit. It means we should keep working until we can put something together that gets that widespread support.”
Steve Benen is incredulous:
This would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. The more Democrats offer Republicans concessions and compromises, the more the GOP says, “We don’t care.” The more Dems try to find “broad-based support,” the more obvious it is Republicans don’t support health care reform. Policymakers “should keep working”? If the 60-vote caucus wants reform, the 40-vote minority doesn’t, and reform can pass without GOP obstructionism, there’s no point in keeping the charade going.
This is especially rich coming from Grassley. He’s defended the “death panel” garbage; he’s prepared to vote against his own compromise legislation, no matter what’s in it; and he’s pulled common-sense measures with bipartisan support from the negotiating table. That’s just from the last six days.
And perhaps most importantly, while Grassley wants lawmakers to keep looking for something that can get “widespread support,” a member of his own leadership — Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) — said yesterday that “almost all Republicans” are likely to oppose reform, even if it’s the result of a bipartisan compromise.
Matthew Yglesias wonders “whether the White House is really so naive that they didn’t realize this would happen,” or whether “the plan was simply to give the GOP enough time and rope for them to make it clear that the White House really and truly did make an effort to put a bipartisan process together, but the Republicans were just more interested in obstruction.”
At the moment, I am leaning toward the first explanation. Judging by the official response today to the talk about Democrats “going it alone,” the White House does not appear to even believe that Republicans in Congress do plan to oppose health care reform en masse. Here, again, is that quote that I used at the top of this post:
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration remains committed to drawing Republican support for the bill, particularly in the Senate.
“I don’t know why we would short-circuit that now,” Gibbs told reporters.
He said the White House believes some Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee “are still working in a constructive way to get reform through the Senate and ultimately to the president’s desk.”
Gibbs was reacting to a story in The New York Times that said Democrats were moving toward going it alone on healthcare given Republican opposition to healthcare reform.
I don’t know — maybe there’s some master strategy behind Gibbs’ seemingly blithe unawareness, but it sure looks like deer in the headlights to me.
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