They Should Have Brought Palin: GOP Leaders Blew Chance to Kill Healthcare at Recent White House Summit
While the ultimate fate of ObamaCare is still uncertain it can certainly be said Republican Congressional ‘leaders’ blew their chance to kill it at the recent White House summit. Sarah Palin correctly states that Congress is a broken institution and she is so right.
When Republicans agreed to meet with President Obama they went in with a battle plan for one hour rather than one for the full seven hours of that day-long circus. We, along with others, ‘Tweeted’ all day about the fact Republicans were allowing the President to filibuster, condescend, interrupt debate and otherwise act every bit the headmaster of an elite school rather than head the world’s most powerful nation.
With so much as stake for the American people not once did a Republican member of Congress simply say to the President: “Sir, we are here on behalf of the American people who tell us you’ve played fast and loose with the specifics of this bill, you have not leveled with taxpayers about costs and you have sat back and allowed one back room deal after another rob the American people of their say in this debate. In other words Mr. President, we feel it’s time you stopped lying to the American people simply because you want a bill which rewards your political friends at the expense of the nation’s health care, job creation and pursuit of happiness.”
That is what is known as leadership.
Some may say this would have shown disrespect and certainly the main stream media would have pounced on such lack of ‘civility’. However, think about this for a moment. What we had in that room was merely nothing more than a bunch of men and women who are paid by the taxpayers. But, the taxpayers seemed not to have a friend at that table. Therefore, someone should have spoken up for everyday taxpayers in the blunt spoken words noted above.
Now, there are those who wrote how ‘well’ the Republicans articulated a more free enterprise approach to healthcare and in particular, Congressman Paul Ryan (Wisconsin), Senator Lamar Alexander (Tennessee) and Tom Coburn (Oklahoma) did very well in that role. However, that was hardly the issue on the table. The President, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid made it clear at the outset the summit was a sham and that reconciliation to pass this awful legislation would be the result.
In other words, when you get into a battle and then the battleground shifts right in front of you, you should be nimble enough to alter your plan and fight to win. The President displayed his inability to think without notes and therefore the nation would have seen that he could not answer the tough and honest questions and today this bill would be dead.
Frankly, it is tiresome to hear many of these alleged ‘GOP leaders’ talk about the evils of this bill and the harm which will befall our nation and yet do nothing when they had the chance to stop it. There they were with a live national TV audience and not one of them had the courage to stand up to the President and brand his deceit as just that.
For a President so laughably willing to compare himself with Abraham Lincoln, one might remind him that it was President Lincoln who proclaimed we have a government “of, by and for the people.” Today, we have a government for the expensive pleasures of timid and dishonest politicians.
You will remember at one point in the summit President Obama mocked Congressman Cantor of Virginia for having the entire 2200+ page bill on the desk in front of him. Seeing as this was the Bill in question for the day, why did the President not like the truth staring he and the watching public in the face? Sadly, we will never know because Mr. Cantor could not even find words to answer the President. This is not leadership and it does not display a fighting spirit on behalf of the American public.
As we noted on this website two weeks ago, Sarah Palin was recently lauded by a reporter when he noted that unlike all politicians, Governor Palin is not plastic, nuanced nor seems to use words polled for their acceptance. He summed up his feelings by saying “Sarah Palin is always Sarah Palin”. She is authentic.
Sarah Palin is also a fighter and she holds in amused contempt the self-importance politicians in Washington place on their value to day-to-day American life. Had Sarah Palin been at that summit, it is likely ‘Obama Care’ would now be a dead issue. You will remember, she effectively altered the whole healthcare debate last summer and into the fall by invoking the ‘death panels’ language. The President was so unglued by this that he even ‘called her out’ in his address to Congress. The point she made was a paraphrase from one of the President’s own advisors. She took heat for saying this but she also showed leadership. Too bad the GOP leadership didn’t consult her first before they attended the summit for the outcome would have been far different.
Instead, because GOP leaders punted away a chance to score on the President, we taxpayers may face decades of disaster. It is time for common sense and it is time for Sarah Palin in 2012.
White House health sumnmit was a joke. Some Republicans spoke well but none took on the President or Pelosi. You are right they blew it and taxpayers will pay for it for decades.