Suffering Through Obama’s Political Theater: Blair House Bait-N-Switch Project

Just FYI, I’ll be live-tweeting the Health Care Summit. Why is Obama doing this?

From National Review’s Tevi Troy:

In addition, as the New York Times reported, the main reason that President Obama had to – finally – release a White House plan is that the Democrats in the House and Senate could not come to an agreement, and the president had promised that he would post a Democratic proposal 72 hours before the summit. As a result of this new, third proposal, we now have even less Democratic unity than we had before Obama stepped in. When the summit takes place, this could lead to the awkward spectacle of Obama arguing for his plan, Reid and his Democratic colleagues arguing for the Senate bill, and Pelosi’s people arguing for the House bill.

So the Democrats are less cohesive than before. The summit appears, then, to be a power play.

The President will get up in front of Republicans and say that they’re obstructionist. The President will make bold statements that force grin-and-bear-it Democrats to go along to get along.

Will it work? Well, President Obama has been notoriously unsuccessful bullying the likes of the Olympic committee, for example, or allies into some form of a solution that he wants…aka “what’s good for me.”

But this theater is horrible..not for Republicans, but for Democrats. I only have to wonder if Obama wants the House to fall to Republicans. It certainly would make his political life easier.

By pushing and pushing on health care, something the American people are clearly sick of, he’s making life harder for Democrats, ultimately. Republicans have little to do with anything at this point.

George Will points out: [read the whole thing]

Today’s health policy “summit” comes at a moment when, as happens with metronomic regularity, Washington is reverberating with lamentations about government being “broken.” Such talk occurs only when the left’s agenda is stalled. Do you remember mournful editorials and somber seminars about “dysfunctional” government when liberals defeated George W. Bush’s Social Security reforms?

The summit’s predictable failure will be a pretext for trying to ram health legislation through the Senate by misusing “reconciliation,” which prevents filibusters. If the Senate parliamentarian rules, as he should, that most of the legislation is ineligible for enactment under reconciliation, the vice president, as Senate president, can overrule the parliamentarian. This has not happened since 1975, but liberals say desperate times require desperate measures.

This is horrible for Democrats. Americans are looking around and see being out of work as the most important issue before them. Health care seems like a nice luxury, at this point.

But President Obama has to do this, I think, for himself. He has to demonstrate to Union bosses he’s beholden to, that he’s tried everything. He wants to “run against congress”, really. Obama seeks to position himself as the reasonable one and everyone else is being obstructionist and stupid.

Except the American people don’t buy it; or haven’t. Will they buy it now? Doubt it. The Obama schtick is overplayed. And the American people are sick of the liberal agenda.

They know what the President really wants and they know that Dems are patient about getting what they want:

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