William Rivers Pitt
There was an awful lot of stupid flying around Washington, DC, in the run-up to Sunday night's historic House vote on President Obama's health care reform initiative, and it didn't stop with the dawn. A New York Times news analysis on Monday morning carried the following tidbit:
Now, armed with a specific piece of legislation that offers concrete benefits to millions of people - and that promises to guarantee insurance for many who found it unaffordable or unattainable - the White House and Democrats believe they may have gained the upper hand.
But there is no doubt that in the course of this debate, Mr. Obama has lost something - and lost it for good. Gone is the promise on which he rode to victory less than a year and a half ago - the promise of a "postpartisan" Washington in which rationality and calm discourse replaced partisan bickering.
Never in modern memory has a major piece of legislation passed without a single Republican vote.
The direct message intended by this passage is that Obama failed to follow through on a campaign and administration promise to end the madness of political partisanship and work together to get things done. Got that? It's Obama's fault that not one Republican voted in favor of this very Republican bill.
That, right there, is some magical stupidity. The reason this process has been so drawn out and berserk is because Obama did everything but give Congressional Republicans the shirt off his back to try and garner even a few of their votes on his health care legislation, and in every instance, he was rebuffed. There are any number of reasons for this, not one of them involving presidential fault.
Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment