Rachel Maddow on the Republicans attempt at revisionist history that Ted Kennedy would have been all about compromising to the point of making it a lousy bill just to get something passed on health care reform.
Maddow: In other words if only Ted Kennedy were still here. If only he had a health care bill those Republicans say they would have voted for that. You know, ah, Ted Kennedy did have a health care bill. Senator Kennedy was chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee which approved a health care reform package in July. It's called the Kennedy bill. And Senator Kennedy, helped write that bill. Senators Hatch, and McCain and Gregg, all voted against it. But the revisionist history goes even deeper. They aren't just saying they would have voted for a Kennedy health care bill, even though they had the chance and they didn't.
They're saying they would have voted for a Kennedy health care bill because Ted Kennedy would have compromised with them, because Ted Kennedy was all about making concessions to Republicans.
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Apparently in the history of Ted Kennedy's life and work as imagined by the GOP today Senator Kennedy was the great compromiser. Ready to water down health care reform in order to bring Republicans on board.
As Rachel notes, Kennedy was anything but that. And to add to Rachel's point, here's a little mash up of some of the "news" coverage from today calling for "Kennedy-like" bipartisanship.
Later in her show Rachel gave some kudos to friend of the site Bob Cesca for his column at the HuffPo titled, Healthcare Reform Named After Ted Kennedy Must Not Suck. If there's one point to get across with all this yapping about what Senator Kennedy would have or would not have done to reform our health care system, I agree with Rachel that Bob's very simple, yet honest statement hits the nail on the head. Bipartisanship be damned if it means passing a lousy piece of legislation, and do not put Senator Kennedy's name on it if that's what we're going to end up with.
