Obama’s Healthcare Summit Scam (Guest Voice)
Obama’s Healthcare Summit Scam
by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
“The proposal to televise a February 25 health-care summit with Republicans grew out of a conclusion by top White House advisers that Obama had bested House GOP leaders during a 90-minute televised discussion in Baltimore last month,” according to the Washington Post.
We thought ObamaCare was pronounced dead with the election of Scott Brown, so why are Republicans even discussing it? The American people had won the victory against this key plank in the Obama socialist agenda. Now, weak and unprincipled Republicans, as they have so many times before, may rush in to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Only after it had become abundantly clear that ObamaCare would never pass, after it was pronounced dead by the Massachusetts voters, Barack Obama asked for a do-over, a mulligan, in the form of this supposedly “bi-partisan” televised healthcare summit.
Bi-partisan? Poppycock. It does not require a MENSA IQ to figure out that Barack Obama did not call this meeting to listen to Republican ideas. As Rush Limbaugh said, it’s a “trap,” an attempt to paint Republicans as the “Party of No” and lay the groundwork to bring ObamaCare back from the dead.
That’s why the obvious response to Obama’s request for a televised healthcare summit should have received an immediate and firm “no,” but it’s apparently not so obvious to some of our Republicans legislators because, they’re falling for the trap.
Someone needs to save these Republicans from themselves. The New York Times called this televised health care summit “a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.”
Political impasse? Give me a break. There is no impasse. The American people don’t want government-run health care and Barack Obama and the Democrats don’t have the votes to pass it. It should be dead.
So why are we going to continue the debate? And why are Republicans allowing it, enabling it. There is absolutely nothing Republicans can gain from this meeting.
Obama will use the occasion, with a little help from his spin-doctors at CBS, MSNBC, ABC and CNN, to make Republicans look bad and/or Republicans will actually offer concessions and put ObamaCare back on the table. Both of those outcomes are losing propositions for the American people.
Here’s what Republicans should say: With all due respect, Mr. President, the American people have already rendered their verdict on ObamaCare. Further discussion would be pointless, fruitless and an insult to the people who elected all of us to public office.
Furthermore, Mr. President, we need not remind you that members of your party literally shut Republicans out of the process, wrote the House and Senate versions of ObamaCare during closed-door meetings with liberal special interests, and, in opposition to the will of the American people, pulled every legislative shenanigan in the book to shove ObamaCare down our throats. As such, your offer of bi-partisanship, after having lost, is laughable.
We will not be puppets for your little political theater. If you’re really serious about reforming the health care system, meet with members of your own party and tell them to start advancing some ideas that will actually make health care more affordable and more available to the American people such as tort reform and allowing companies to sell health insurance across state lines. We’ll support those measures.
If members of your party are unwilling to go down that road, you can still work with us to advance real healthcare reform. We’ll simply agree to wait until November, when Republicans have recaptured the majority, and place real healthcare reform legislation on your desk.
That’s what they should say. Will they have the courage? All indications look bad.
Greta Van Susteren of Fox News asked House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, whether or not he was going to attend the Obama healthcare summit. Boehner tap-danced. He never answered the question.
And yet, he did acknowledge the idiocy of the entire exercise. At one point he acknowledged posing the question, “Why are we going to talk about a bill that can’t pass?” He also expressed reservations that he might “walk into some trap.”
Indeed, Congressman Boehner, this televised healthcare summit is a “trap” and a scam designed to make you and the rest of the Republicans look bad. Since you’re going into this trap to “talk about a bill that can’t pass,” why go?
Moreover, why take the risk that your efforts might actually give new life to ObamaCare and give Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid the opportunity to start the whole sordid process over again? Americans have had enough of the secret meetings, the back-room deals, the legislative shenanigans and the repeated attempts to shove ObamaCare down the throats of the American people.
©2010 Floyd and Mary Beth Brown. The Browns are bestselling authors and speakers. Together they write a national weekly column distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Floyd is also president of the Western Center for Journalism. This column is licensed to run on TMV in full.
19 Responses to “Obama’s Healthcare Summit Scam (Guest Voice)”
For someone whose side has only been on the sacrificing side when it comes to the demands of bipartisanship, this was certainly a breath of fresh air.
There are legitimate, adult concerns against the kind of agenda I support. But this sort of pouting, partisan, exaggerative and excitable screaming merely manages to be soothing and off-putting at the same time, sort of like one of Steyn's more wounded and bitter screeds.
“after it was pronounced dead by the Massachusetts voters”
Since when did the state of Mass speak for the entire country? Why do we hold national elections or elect people to Congress when we can just have the people of Mass decide everything for us?
Your initial premise fails the Constitution test.
“As Rush Limbaugh said, it’s a “trap,” an attempt to paint Republicans as the “Party of No” and lay the groundwork to bring ObamaCare back from the dead.”
Yikes…a trap!! If you had any faith in your Republican Reps…you would send them to this summit with the sole purpose of flipping the trap back on to Obama. Just think….it is much easier to counter attack a surprise attack when you know when the surprise attack is coming! But instead you say…Don't Go! Because you saw how Obama made Reps look really bad the last time this happened. And he was debating 1 against hundreds.
Mr Brown is a little “out there”. You can find his website through the western jour. site.
He will come to your church and teach you…
Obama Unmasked: The truth will scare you
and
Why Washington is a threat to your financial security
It doesn't really matter what the reasons are for Obama wanting a new televised debate(it's not a debate)or why the republicans are going with it. The idea that Obama, democrats, or republicans are doing this for “the benefit of the American people” so we can have “affordable health care” is laughable and a joke on the american people.
Everything that “they” do or don't do in DC is a political calculation to the benefit of who? The political parties or those individuals within the party, whichever party it is,(d or r)as long as they can keep “conning” the “american public”!! There are too many followers/zombie's of the right or left. They are both full of _ _ _ _!!!!
The only constituency that matters to these parties are the corporations that own them!!
I appreciate the directness of such transparent rhetoric since it removes the need to waste time reading any further.
You should read the whole thing…it is quite entertaining. The only reason I looked the guy up was to make sure he was being serious. This article is so bad that I thought he was just joking.
JSpencer wrote: “I appreciate the directness of such transparent rhetoric since it removes the need to waste time reading any further.“
Hah! then you got further than me JSpencer I stopped at by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
You're both right of course, the entertainment value shouldn't be underestimated.
Floyd is also president of the Western Center for Journalism.
So that's what happened to Journalism
This whole thing reads like satire, especially this part:
“We thought ObamaCare was pronounced dead with the election of Scott Brown, so why are Republicans even discussing it? The American people had won the victory against this key plank in the Obama socialist agenda.”
I disagree with the authors. I think the Reps should go in and try to be, or at least act, like they are trying to work with the Dems. If either the Dems or the Reps overplay their hands, then perhaps we may see it. To not go and try is wrong IMHO. The public can form their own opinion, but unfortunatel, they may perceive “reality” on a preconceived political bias basis.
This post is a bunch nonsense. The rest of America has spoken when only the people in Massachusetts voted? Does this mean the rest of us no longer have to vote, we'll do whatever Massachusetts does? Furthermore, where in our beloved constitution does it specify that it takes 60 votes to pass any bill. What happened to majority rules? Should we require the winners of federal elections to have 60% of the vote in order to be seated?
If you ask me, the Browns are the best advocates of Obama's HealthCare Reform that I have read in a long time. If opponents to HCR are this unbalanced, it behooves the rest of us to take the opposite position to the Browns. They sound like Tea Party candidates.
I'll have to say, this kind of post doesn't exactly raise the level of discourse.
Nor likely will this sort of summit.
We wont have a good chance at a civil discourse till after the November elections, both sides are only really focused on that for now. All else is fluff.
The Browns are more than a little pathetic. It's a “guest voice” I think we could probably do without unless the point is to remind us how irrational the far right really is.
Pathetic indeed. Not only do the voters of MA not speak for the rest of us, but also they already have public healthcare.
So the Browns and M. Reagan are the best “right” voices TMV can find? That's pitiful. I'm so sorry.
Me too. Reading something from them once was enough and after researching them it convinced me that they would never be capable of presenting rational arguments.
It was really disturbing what Obama's “plan” contains. Perhaps it's just puffery before the “summit” begins. (The question remains, will the Dems actually, for a Change, bargain with the GOP, and in good faith?) It could be puffery with an eye toward shoving the GOP into a likely rejection and failure of the summit. That would give the shallow people all the “excuse” they could accept for proceeding with reconciliation to force this legislation through.
Not good.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487…
“If either the Dems or the Reps overplay their hands, then perhaps we may see it. “
Obama's team couldn't wait. They've overplayed already, with the Obama “plan.” Why, and why now?