The Health Care Summit Sham

Let's take a look at the different evidence that the health care summit today was just a sham:

1) President Obama released his own monstrosity of a plan prior to the summit which was even more expansive than the Senate plan, effectively sending the message that this is not a negotiation, it is an invitation to agree to the plan;

2) Despite the supposed desire to include Republicans in the process, 21 Democrats were invited (President Obama not included) compared to 17 Republicans;

3) Democratic speakers (not including President Obama) took 114 minutes, President Obama took 119 minutes, and Republicans took 110 minutes (final tally 233 minutes for supporters of the bill vs. 110 minutes for those in opposition);

4) In explaining the massive difference in talking time, the President (who is apparently from the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez school of fairness and 8 hour speech writing) explained that he didn't count himself because he's the President, make no mistake, President Obama was not acting as an impartial moderator, he was an advocate;

5) Democrats were already planning on moving forward with the bill through the reconciliation process before the summit even started;

6) Faced with his campaign promises of openness the President responded that the campaign and election are over;

7) President Obama scolded Representative Eric Cantor (R. Penn.) for bringing a copy of the Senate bill, which was the basis of the Obama proposal, to the summit;

8) Every time Republicans presented their solutions or their problems with the proposals President Obama accused them of simply resorting to talking points; and

9) The President's closing comments could easily be read as indicating that he is determined to move forward with reconciliation.

The thing to take away from this is that the Democrats and the Obama administration held this summit to try and set up Republicans as the party of no as an excuse to move forward without cooperation on the bill. Democrats don't care how unpopular the bill is with the public. The ideologues will try to get this through no matter what.