Obama Lectures On Bipartisanship
Now that his party no longer has a super majority in Congress, Obama has been banging the bipartisanship drums. And today he launched into a lecture about bipartisanship during a surprise visit to the White House press room.
It’s pretty clear to me that the effort Obama is going to lead on health care has a lot to do with watering down a bill until they can peel off a few Republicans from the opposition, stamp “bipartisan” on it and then declare victory. Because at this point, he needs to pass something and move on. He can’t afford a full retreat in advance of what is shaping up to be a tough midterm election season, so the time has come compromise.
And that generally works pretty well for liberals. The conservative position on government health care is that we don’t want any of it. The liberal position is they want the government to run everything. A compromise is that government runs more than it did before.
Which is a marginal victory for liberals and an outright loss for conservatives.
There’s no room here for compromise or “bipartisanship.”
