So the Republicans are afraid that when the time comes for the rubber to hit the road, some of them might defect and vote for a Democratic health reform bill after all:
At a breakfast sponsored by the American Spectator, I asked Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the House Republican Conference chairman what I thought would be a yes or no question: Would all Republican members of the House vote against the eventual, Democratic-sponsored health care bill? Pence spent nine minutes talking about Republican ideas.
"I think you will see overwhelming Republican opposition," said Pence. "Will it be unanimous? I defer you to the whip’s office." I asked again about the suggestion that the Republicans might, possibly, not vote unanimously against a Democratic health care bill as they voted against the stimulus package and the president’s budget.
"You should anticipate overwhelming Republican opposition to government-run health insurance," said Pence. "I didn’t say ‘possibly not’ unanimous. We’ll leave ‘unanimous’ to the other [leadership] offices."
So "bipartisanship" the BaucusCare way has failed, unless you want to define bipartisanship as everyone agrees it's awful and there's no way they'll support it. But there may be some bipartisan support for whatever the final bill is anyway, at least according to the House Republican Conference chairman. Interesting.
How could Democrats increase the likelihood of support for such a bill? How about by offering something that will be wildly popular without any need to proselytize for it because overwhelming majorities of the American people already know what it is and wish they had the freedom to join it too? I'm talking about opening Medicare to anyone of any age who wants to buy into it - Medicare For All.
Can you see the agony of Republicans forced by their leadership to actually vote against a bill that would open Medicare to all Americans? Can you just hear those elected Republicans having to explain it to their constituents? Now that would be a spectacle of Republicans in disarray that would be worth seeing.
In a country where the top one percent controls financial resources equal to those of the bottom 95 percent, the expansion of the program could be paid for by taxing the rich.
I'd love to see elected Republicans having to decide whether they can really afford to vote against a bill that would give subsidized, hassle-free, uncancellable health coverage to every American, including their constituents.
I'd also love to see Democrats stop negotiating against themselves and just go ahead and do the right thing, the thing that accords with the principles they say they believe in, instead of twisting themselves in pretzels like the BaucusCare debacle to try to fend off attacks from the right. Maybe one day they'll learn that the attacks come anyway, and if they haven't fought for policies that accord with their own principles (which are different from Republican principles), they've lost, for all of us, anyway.