What’s In It for Republicans?
08 February 2010 10:35 pm by Taylor Marsh
What do you know. Ezra Klein finally gets it. Better late than never, though as long as it took it’s not very impressive.
On Sunday, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell responded to Barack Obama’s summit invitation by demanding Obama scrap the health-care reform bill entirely. This is the context for that demand. What they want isn’t a bill that incorporates their ideas. They’ve already got that. What they want is no bill at all. And that’s a hard position for the White House to compromise with.
Regardless of the obvious, Pres. Obama is going to re-engage by inviting Republicans to come into the room with their ideas on health care, with Kathleen Sebelius offering the following assessment, via HuffPo’s Sam Stein:
Sebelius said that the president views the bipartisan meeting as a needed pivot to move reform forward. Asked if he will expedite the legislative process following his various sit-downs with congressional Republicans, she replied: “I certainly think so. I think he sees this as a step to actually accelerating the process forward. He wants to move forward. He wants a bill at his desk and he sees this as kind of closing the loop and let’s go.” …
Once again, Obama’s people are assuming Republicans want to play along. That Pres. Obama has the clout or they care enough about his charm to join in. It’s certainly not his power to punish that bothers them.
Let’s come at this from another direction. What’s in it for Republicans if they do play the bipartisan game?
You got it. Nothing. They see it as handing Obama and the Democrats a win that goes into the FDR column of big domestic policies that have wedded people to Democrats through these issues. So, seriously, why would Republicans do anything that offers a headline like Obama’s bipartisan summit worked?
The only way Republicans will sign on is if Obama let’s them walk away with talking points they can use with the base, including but not exclusively Tea Partiers, who is eating them alive in a district near you.
Any bill out of that deliberation wouldn’t be worth having, which has been the Republican goal all along.
Everyone on the same scorecard now?

