As patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, bipartisanship is the last refuge of the partisan. For Sunday’s vote on the Senate health care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wore a light purple suit, literally wrapping herself in the color of bipartisanship. Rep. David Obey, who was presiding, wore a purple necktie, as President Obama did during his State of the Union address. Pelosi spoke of the 200 Republican amendments included in the bill that everyone knows doesn’t contain a single major Republican idea.
He says one thing and does another
The health care reform bill was a partisan Democrat smorgasbord of taxes, regulations and entitlement. There was nothing bipartisan about it, but there the Democrats were, wearing their purple and attacking Republicans for uniformly opposing the bill that didn’t have any Republican votes because it didn’t earn any.
It was a sign of how surreal American politics has become. Stagecraft and spin trump facts; symbolism and rhetoric trump truth. Though 34 Democrats voted against the bill, making opposition to it the only bipartisan act of the day, anyone absorbing the theatrics might be misled, as intended, into thinking that the majority was acting out of a spirit of bipartisan unity while the minority was stewing, recalcitrant, in its own hate and bile.
Campaigning in New Hampshire in October of 2007, Sen. Obama said, "We’re not going to pass universal health care with a, with a 50-plus-one strategy." Ah, the old, bipartisan Obama Americans thought they were electing. If only they’d gotten that guy as president instead of Mr. "I won. So I think on that one, I trump you."
Read More: By Andrew Cline, The American Spectator
Tags: Barack Obama, Bipartisanship, HypocrisyPresident Obama has developed a scaled-down version of health care reform that would cost a fraction of the price tag of other plans, but the White House played down the Plan B as the president entered a bipartisan health care summit Thursday in Washington.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told Fox News that "we are not focused" on any kind of backup plan going into the meeting, which will bring together House and Senate members from both parties to debate the health care overhaul that appeared to stop in its tracks last month after Republican Scott Brown was elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts.
If he can’t do it through bipartisan means, Obama has a second option
"The president is focused exclusively on what’s happening at today’s meeting," Gibbs told Fox News.
Administration officials said the plan is "not where we are now" and was drawn up at Obama’s request after the Massachusetts election that cost Democrats their filibuster-proof majority.
But Republicans, while agreeing to attend the meeting, have spent the last several weeks blasting it as a photo op for the president and a trap to make them look intransigent on the issue. The plan they have offered is vastly different from the president’s plan and the Democratic bills that have passed through both chambers of Congress, and common ground appears elusive.
Read More: FOXNews
Tags: Barack Obama, Bipartisanship, Healthcare, plan BHow long will it take for every last American to realize President Barack Obama is not about bipartisanship, reconciliation (other than as a process to cram his health-care bill through Congress) and uniting Americans? As his latest gyrations on health care demonstrate, he will not be deterred in his quest to saddle Americans with socialized medicine, even if it greatly increases the likelihood he won’t be re-elected.
here comes Obama with his disingenuous attempts at Bipartisanship
Here we have Obama, frenetically busy with at least three of his hands, pushing different buttons and sending mixed signals. I guess being a self-perceived messiah means you don’t have to worry about being flagrantly inconsistent, even on the same day or in the context of one speech.
He’s invited Republicans to a bipartisan summit on health care, intending to create the illusion that he’s interested in conservative ideas on the subject.
But at the same time – he can’t even pretend long enough to let this ruse play out – he is threatening Republicans that if they filibuster current congressional health-care proposals, he will urge Congress to pass Obamacare by bastardizing the reconciliation process.
But wait, just like a Ginsu knife infomercial, there’s more. Obama has also unveiled the outlines of his own new health-care proposal, but it is hardly a model of bipartisanship.
Read More: By David Limbaugh, WorldNetDaily
Tags: Barack Obama, Bipartisanship, DisingenousPresident Barack Obama says he has not succeeded in bringing the country together, acknowledging an atmosphere of divisiveness that has washed away the lofty national feeling surrounding his inauguration a year ago.
Obama has united people…. in opposition to his radical agenda
"That’s what’s been lost this year … that whole sense of changing how Washington works," Obama said in an interview with People magazine.
The president said his second-year agenda will be refocused on uniting the country around common values, "whether we’re Democrats or Republicans."
"We all want work that’s satisfying, pays the bills and gives children a better future and security," Obama said in the interview, which the magazine conducted with the president and his wife, Michelle Obama, at the White House last Friday.
The president’s comments came as Republican leaders rallied against the core items of his agenda, from his economic stimulus plan to health care. The mood of the country has remained in a sustained slump, too, as double-digit unemployment followed a campaign built upon "hope" and "change."
Read More: BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tags: Barack Obama, Bipartisanship, UnityPresident Barack Obama is prodding House and Senate Democrats to get him a final health care bill as soon as possible, encouraging them to bypass the usual negotiations between the two chambers in the interest of speed.
So much for a new era of bipartisanship
Obama delivered the message at an Oval Office meeting Tuesday evening with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his No. 2, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., joined in by phone.
They agreed that rather than setting up a formal conference committee to resolve differences between health bills passed last year by the House and Senate, the House will work off the Senate’s version, amend it and send it back to the Senate for final passage, according to a House leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the private meeting.
Obama himself will take a hands-on role, convening another meeting with congressional leaders at the White House on Wednesday, the aide said.
The aim is to get a final bill to Obama’s desk before the State of the Union address sometime in early February.
Read More: By ERICA WERNER, AP
Tags: Barack Obama, Bipartisanship, Healthcare Bill, new era of politicsPresident Obama now realizes he probably will have to pass health reform with Democratic votes alone, White House officials say.
The admission is a monumental shift in Washington’s top fight of the year, with the energy now shifting to differences among Democrats, rather than efforts to lure a critical mass of Republicans.
The aides call it more a prediction than a strategy shift, and blame the GOP.
"We were forced into this by Republicans," one official said.
White House gives up on Bipartisan Healthcare Reform
The administration is pointing to increasingly partisan comments by the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Charles Grassley of Iowa, who said while home for summer recess: “I’m not walking away from the table. I’m being pushed away from the table.”
Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said blaming the GOP is "laughable."
Read More: By MIKE ALLEN & CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN, Politico
Tags: Barack Obama, Bipartisanship, Healthcare reform, Rahm EmanuelNewsmax
McCain could teach Obama a thing or two
Senator John McCain said on Friday that President Barack Obama should include Republicans in his plans sooner if he really wants their support after the bitter debate over the $787 billion economic stimulus bill.
McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, and other Republicans complained they had been left out of negotiations on the legislation by Democrats who hold majorities in both houses of Congress.
McCain said the bill was filled with non-emergency spending paid for with borrowed money that future generations will have to pay back.
“I think that the majority of people understand that this was generational theft,” McCain told Reuters.
Tags: Barack Obama, Bipartisanship, John McCain
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