Health Care Deform Just What the Repugs Ordered

When you hear that Mitch McConnell and the repugs want to stop health care reform at all costs, that's true, but not the whole story.

What Mitch McConnell and the repugs really want is to fatally cripple President Obama and the Democrats, destroying any chance of them saving the country from economic catastrophe and thus ensuring republican return to power.

Here's the cute part: stopping health reform from happening at all is not a sure path to that goal. If Congress fails to send any health care reform bill to President Obama, and the Democratic Party manages to persuade the country that the failure is entirely the fault of obstructionist republicans, then the public backlash could bury the repugs for years, if not decades.

But what if, instead of stopping any bill from passing, the repugs make sure that a bill does pass. Passes with Democratic votes only. A bill that is so weak, so useless, so much a zillion-dollar giveaway to insurance companies and a guarantee that more Americans will pay more for worse insurance. Who will Americans blame then?

And what - precisely - has the Democrats' "successful" wooing of Olympia Snowe accomplished? Only giving veto power over the content of the final bill to someone who ... hmm, let's see:

Snowe opposes the public option, and all the insurance company restrictions and middle-class subsides that would make health care reform actually accomplish affordable universal coverage.

Snowe has made it clear that if she doesn't like the bill, she won't support it in the vote that really matters - on cloture. (Why will the dems need Snowe to make 60 votes for cloture? Because they failed to punish Traitor Joe when they had the chance.)

Snowe will vote to allow a vote only on a gutted, worse-than-nothing, economy-destroying bill that accomplishes precisely what Mitch McConnell and the repugs really want: killing the Obama presidency and the Democratic Congress.

Congratulate the Senate Democrats: they've just handed Mitch McConnell and the repugs the gift of a lifetime.

If you haven't yet given up, you can click here.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....