Dean: The republicans are going to vote against any bill, no matter what,

so it's time to stop pandering to them. He just said that on the news. I agree 100%!
I don't think the word was pandering. The meaning was.

One has to wonder, "Am I really smarter than all those high-level politicians in the Dem party, that I can figure that out, but they can't?"

It's a frightening thought.

It's hard for me to believe that Obama and his advisors are so gullible that they actually think the republicans will support anything they do.

I think most people here have understood this from the start, before there were any draft bills, before the committees were holding hearings- months ago. I know I said so and I think others did too.

Which is what makes all these contortions so exasperating. Republicans will ALWAYS hate the idea of healthcare reform. They hate it in the abstract. They hate it in any particular form in any bill, existing or projected. They will ALWAYS hate it. They'll hate it and they will always hate President Obama. Nothing any Democrat does to placate them is going to stop their seething hatred of government intervention in the punitive, fatalistic marketplace of life and death under capitalism, and nothing President Obama does will make them stop wishing he was wearing a head waiter's uniform and bringing them their steak instead of flying around on Air Force One and living the White House. That's the ugly truth.

To extent that Republicans engage at all in this legislative process towards a Healthcare Reform Act, they are trying to SABOTAGE AND WEAKEN the program. If they can't stop it altogether they will try to pervert it into a crony capitalistic gravy train for the insurance companies, and/or warp it with a congenital defect that will cause it to wither and die and early death. Even though the President is giving them disproportionate influence over the writing of the bill they are trying to subvert it. Even though they are getting disproportionate authorship over the provisions of the bill, they still won't vote for it. Even the Republican Senators who are getting this undue disproportionate influence are saying they won't vote for it. And should we manage to pass something halfway good, the Republicans will be looking for their chance to kill it off 10, 20, 30 50 years and more from now just like they come after Social Security and Medicare about once every decade.

It is fruitless to seek bipartisan cooperation in creating this legislation. It's also DANGEROUS. You're allowing people who don't want the project to succeed--the minority party--to have greater influence over its creation than people who do want it to succeed. For what ? So they'll like it and want to keep it around? DREAM ON! So they'll like President Obama or be nice to Democrats some day down the road? Never going to happen.

The republicans are the party of NO. Let's not give them a damn thing!

they will support NONE of his policies

wait till he gets to immigration, that will be fun.

They'd rather see a Democrat in the White House fail, than see America succeed.

:sarcasm:

And yes I heard that. He is right, but at this point... they are getting all the cover to do what they intended to do... sorry, if I am that cynical any more.

Now what is true is that this may split the progressives from the DLC...

Of course the GOP was going to vote against any healthcare bill. That observation is like offering the sun is hot. The whole "pandering" & "bipartisanship" bullshit in Congress is solely a way for certain DEMOCRATS to serve their corporate masters. It is theater. It is guys like Baucus that are taking the heat, but it is folks like Evan Bayh and others that are trying kill meaningful healthcare reform and the public option. The key here is that they want to kill without having to leave their fingerprints on the knife in the back of corpse.

Dean should be MORE articulate about who actually will kill a meaningful healthcare bill - Democrats!