The Great Health Care Melodrama: Act III

Previously: Prelude Act I Act II

During Act II, the Health Care Summit, Representative Joe Barton articulated the principles that have guided Republicans’ response to the Democrats’ massive health insurance and health care regulation bills:

I do think, though, that there is a fundamental difference in the vision that you and your friends on the majority have put forward, and the vision that myself and those of us in the minority have put forward.  It’s the fundamental role of government.

We believe that we should use free markets to empower people and give them choices. And for the best of intentions, yourself and most of your allies in the Democratic Party seem to believe that the government, either through a mandate or through a regulatory requirement, knows better and will do better for health care for most Americans.

In his weekly address, released on Saturday, President Obama kicked off Act III of the Melodrama, an effort to establish in the mind of the public the notion that ObamaCare, as written, is the product of faultless wisdom, and there can be no legitimate disagreement.   He began by attempting to demean Republicans like Joe Barton:

We need to move past the bickering and the game-playing that holds us back and blocks progress for the American people.

Obama often resorts to this sort of rhetoric, dismissing principled dissent as mere “bickering and game-playing,” as if everything he puts forward were undeniably flawless and there could be no justification for disagreement.  At the Summit his position was that since Republicans share his concern about rising insurance premiums and costs to government they should support the Democrats’ massive government take-over, as if there were only one, self-evident strategy for dealing with those problems.

Smearing Republicans is futile in any event because the legislative log jam has nothing to do with Republican objections.  Democrats began have such commanding majorities in both houses that Republicans are nearly irrelevant.  In truth, ObamaCare could have become law months ago were it not for Obama’s inability to fully unite Democrats behind it.

It’s hard to understand how this exercise, inviting Republican input and then dismissing that input as bickering, will move the President any closer to his goal.  But maybe The Greatest Politician Ever knows something the rest of us don’t.  All we can do is wait and watch.