The Beat Goes On…

by Gordon Cooper

From Broader View Weekly, March 4, 2010

The Health Care Summit was intended to be an opportunity for the sunlight of sincere discussion to break through the partisan fog that has enveloped our nation’s capital for the past year. Sadly, we did not see any rays of sunshine breaking through. One encouraging aspect of the event was that it enabled Obama to finally fulfill one of his campaign promises. He had repeatedly promised us that his administration would be marked by transparency and his actions at the summit finally revealed some of the inner workings of his mindset.

It became crystal clear to anyone who has a small knowledge of the subtle syllables of body language that Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the other Democrat leaders really had no intention of incorporating any of the ideas of the Republicans into their partisan bill, nor did they intend to eliminate any of the objectionable items.

Before I address the utter disdain and elitist condescension exhibited by the Democrats toward the Republicans in attendance, and the American people who overwhelmingly disapprove of this bill and the process being used to push it through, I feel I must address some misstatements by my fellow columnist.

Keith mentions McCain’s indictment of the Democrat’s “unsavory deal-making” as bogus because “both bills were crafted in bipartisan committees and contain hundreds of Republican amendments.” I am sure that even Keith knows that is not true. The final draft contains less than twenty Republican amendments and the last three weeks of the construction were done completely by Democrats behind closed and locked doors. The deals to which McCain referred, and Scott Brown campaigned against, were all thrown together during that Christmas Eve corruption of American politics.

Further on Keith swallows the bait thrown down by the Democrats for the hungry lapdogs in the media when he states that the “many differences amounted to semantics”. I understand that is an attempt to paint the opposition as petty and just… well, oppositional. The truth is that both parties agreed that there is a need for reform and sad stories exist out there; costs are increasing and the burden of covering millions of uninsured should be lifted. The difference of opinion in how this should be done is one of philosophy not of linguistics.

The need for reform was never denied by the Republicans, no matter how often the media and the Democrats try to repeat the mantra that they are “the party of NO!” The sad fact is that the Democrats came to the process with majority rule in both houses and in the executive office, and they assumed the role of oligarchs rather than the role of public servants. This became obvious through the summer as they shut up those at town hall meetings and slithered together in back room deal-making.
The philosophical differences between the parties became very clear when the Republicans offered market-driven solutions and the Democrats responded with a call for increased regulation and legislation. Therein lies the source for all the partisan fog.

It seems to me that not only are the Democrats determined to go forward without a look to the constructive ideas of the minority party, they are also determined to turn a blind eye to the wishes of the majority of the American people. A CNN poll released the morning of the summit paralleled a similar poll by Fox News in which over 65% of the people polled agreed with the Republicans that this 2,700 page bill should be shredded and a new, truly bipartisan legislation should be crafted.

Obama senses the changing wind, and realizing that if the process were to start over, that a bill would not be finalized before the November elections; and if that were the case, he would most likely be dealing with a red majority in both houses. Therefore, he and the Democrats are going forward, despite the will of the people, the rules of congress, and the decent guidelines of political discourse.