Waxman: GOP making 'serious mistake' to think health bill stance will bring 2010 wins

http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/08/21/waxman-gop-making-serious-mistake-to-think-health-bill-stance-will-bring-2010-wins/

Waxman: GOP making 'serious mistake' to think health bill stance will bring 2010 wins
@ 1:31 pm by Michael O'Brien


Republicans are making a "serious mistake" by thinking that stopping Democrats' healthcare reform will result in political victories in 2010, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) warned.

"I think they make a serious mistake trying to make this a partisan fight," Waxman told U.S. News in an interview posted Friday.

Waxman asserted that GOP-ers would be in error to look to the 1994 healthcare fight, in which they blocked President Bill Clinton's reform efforts, as a template for the 2009 fight.

"They are looking at the playbook from 1993 and 1994 where the Republicans pulled someone like Bob Dole back from working out a deal on healthcare in order to deny President Clinton a victory," Waxman said. "And they were rewarded in the election in '94."

"They are playing that same card again, but this time it's not going to work," he added.

Waxman, the chairman of one of the three committees crafting healthcare legislation in the House, signaled that Republican support wouldn't be essential to passing legislation if members of the GOP refuse to play ball on negotiations.

"I think it's always important for legislation to be bipartisan," he said. "But you don't always achieve that goal. If the Republicans don't want it because they want to deny Obama a political success, you don't stop your efforts."

This is especially true of those freshman Representatives from barely purple districts. If they do not support the President and oppose vigorously the Republicans over health care, they will certainly lose their districts. The people who voted Democrat for the first time did so because they are tired of Republican dominance, and they will not vote twice for someone who simply mirrors Republicans. Many of the people in those districts who normally do vote Democratic simply will not bother if these people abandon the Party in crisis.

they think they've lost the previous 2 elections beause they weren't. So not they're being as friggin' nuts as they can.

Conrad, Nelson, Pryor, and the rest of the conservative Dem Senators who get big money from the health care industrial complex.

Then the country could watch the Dems voting against reform in the Senate and the Repos could make a pretty good case as to how hypocritical the Dems really are.

But the Repos aren't that smart and they are way too constrained by ideology to ever do such a bold move. I do think it's about the only way the Repos can win though. It would be a risky move, but their alternative isn't very attractive, either, as Waxman points out.

That would be a crazy bold move. Please don't give them ideas.

:)

Thanks for naming it Obamacare, cons