Obama's Rigged Invitation

Barack Obama's invitation for the GOP to sit down with him for a televised health care summit is an interesting political gambit, but I doubt whether it'll fly. As Megan McArdle observes:

Republicans are saying what you'd expect them to: we won't engage in sham negotiations. If you want us to come to the table, shelve this monstrous and unpopular plan and let's start over.

Democrats should recognize the tactic: they invented it. And used it successfully against Social Security reform in 2005. Sure, they wanted to do Social Security reform, they said. All Republicans had to do to bring them to the table was get rid of the central point of the reform: the private accounts. Astonishingly enough, they did not suffer at the polls, even though the president tried to stir up public discontent with their "obstructionism". The problem is, the public doesn't get mad at you for obstructing things the public doesn't like.

The GOP Congressional delegation would be idiots to agree to serve as human stage props for a White House-controlled event that inevitably will be rigged against them. Especially because Obama is still more charismatic, smarter, and a better debater than just about anybody on the GOP side. Wrong but sharp.

Update: I think Andrew Sullivan's got a valid point that "not showing up makes [the GOP] look totally obstructionist and makes Obama look more responsible and presidential." Maybe the political optics require the GOP to show up.

On the merits, however, it still seems clear to me that the summit is intended by the White House as a political trap. It won't be a meaningful negotiation, since the President is coming in with strong preconditions, as the White House's latest statement on the summit makes clear that:

The President is adamant that we seize this historic moment to pass meaningful health insurance reform legislation. ... What he will not do, however, is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small business counting on it.

<Tongue in cheek> I'm tempted to insert a crack here about how the President is willing to negotiate with Ira and North Korea without preconditions, but that would be the sort of cheap debater's ploy with which the summit will be rife, so I'll pass. </Tongue in cheeck>

Unless the President is willing to terms and conditions that make the summit a level playing field in which both sides ideas will get fair representation and a fair opportunity for inclusion in the bill, the GOP should skip it.

BTW, McArdle also catches the NYT in a bit of an inconsistency when it comes to "obstruction." Amusing.

Comments

[msw]

wrong but sharp?
No, sharp and the facts are on his side, that's why the republicans look like dolts in their meeting with Obama. They actually believe that tort reform and competition between states will change the equation despite that fact that there is no data supporting their their claim. What a bunch of charlatans and rubes

[Mike]

Wrong but sharp?

Other than the US, every western country including mine - Australia - ensures universal health care for its citizens. It is an issue that really does make other westerners uncertain about the decency and humanity of American values.

And to pre-empt the usual attack about waiting lists, even for elective surgery in Australia as a public patient you wouldn't wait for more than 3 months, we spend about 2/3 as much on health care as you do, and we live 2 years longer, on average. While the US savagely rations access to critical health care by excluding or bankrupting 40 million of its own citizens when they most need help.

And the it is the GOP that is the defender of all this misery and iniquity! The GOP is wrong and stupid. The US wastes its human capital.

[T. Shaw]

Obama's invitation was to an ambush with his main scam media propaganda arm set to lie about everything. His idea of bi-partisanship is "My way, or the highway." It's like when Lenin got control and called a session of the Duma. He had red army troops in the galleries fixed bayonets, locked and loaded so his agenda was unanimously passed.

Mike,

Stay in Australia. The Premier of Canada is coming down to the USA for surgery - GO FIGURE. Do your public schools work, too? Our's don't. How much do you croc hunters spend on defense? Do you have 20,000,000 illegal immigrants and 30,000,000 alcoholics/drug addicts/career welfare dependents/career felons bankrupting your health and school systems? But, anyhow, thanks for telling us how to run our country.

msw (master socialist work?),

Eighty percent of us don't want our health coverage screwed up by college kids that never did anything but know everything.

Everything Obama and his band of marxist morons touch turns to feces.

The problems with health are legion, start with over-regulation and tort lawyers. Some reforms - like the GOP proposals - may solve the guv induced health weaknesses, not any destructive 3,000 page monstrosity that Obama would need a year to read.

My youngest is 21 years old. When he was in utero - that's over 21 years ago for you innumerate liberals - the OB/GYN's malpractice insurance cost him $12,000 a month. I bet its $25,000 a month now. The cost for my baby was $3,000. That's a lot of babies to pay for John Edwards to become a multi-millionaire. Plus the threat of litigation causes docs to order 88 tests which further screws the pooch. So, guvmint asshats ruined health, and now you want them to take it over and screw up the rest of it?

[It's a trap!]

The republicans should skip this democrat photo-op and let the bill die. Then, if the desire still exists to 'fix' health care, they should start over, now that the playing field has been leveled somewhat with the election of Scott Brown. The president should stay out of it. Let the 3 branches of government function as they were intended.

[Earl T]

Lies and statistics! Way to go, Mike the Aussie!

If your average life span is 2 years longer, its because you don't count infants who die early as part of the average, which is a point well-made before!

"Bankrupting 40 million while savagely rationing care"??? Too funny! From what radical pile of crap did you garner those laughably, false statistics?

Just what I worry about---blokes like you questioning our decency, while making s**t up!

[Eric Rasmusen]

The Republican response should be to agree to the televised summit if it is in a format where they get to ask question of Obama and he has to have the TV cameras on him while he answers or evades. Question time! He'd refuse, unless he's very foolish, and that would be that.

[Ryan]

Uh, Eric, he just did that (televised question time). And he cleaned their clocks.

As for bi-partisanship, he's adopoted all the major ideas from the right that have actually scored well from the CBO and dropped items like the public option (which scores well).

The Republican critique seems to be that the plan is "monstrous" but it seems to end there. They do not suggest ways to make health care better.

If you prefer the status quo and simply wish to argue "I've got mine", that is certainly your right. But when people like T. Shaw just make wild claims that Obama is a marxist (whose proposed health plan simply consists of subsidies for private insurance to obtain near-universal coverage rather than goverment ownership of the means of health production like in the UK), they discredit themselves.