What world is this man living in? I was watching FOX News and Blue Dogger Dan Boren was on saying that the Democratic Party should be centrist,in the middle and pragmatic and not a left wing party. So what are we then? This is an attempt by the Blue Dogs to tank the House bill until they are catered to. He must love those co-opts. (rough transcript)
What is the hangup that you see?
Boren: I think most of us want reform...I think they main sticking point in the House bill is the surtax. Also we're concerned with other ideas to tax benefits. We want to cover people with preexisting conditions, but we need a bill that's in the center. We want bipartisan consensus. I think that's what most people want. We can't just have one or two republicans. We've got to have a broad swath of the Congress. It looks like it's starting in the Senate Finance committee, but in the House is a little bit bogged down with kind of a bill that's on the left flank and hopefully we can bring it to the center..
It's a district that John McCain carried with sixty six percent of the vote, but at the same time I'm still a democrat. I want to make sure that this administration and this country is successful and the way for it to be successful is to be bipartisan....For democrats to be successful is we've got to be seen as centrist, moderates as pragmatic...
Boren is saying that he'll only support something that republicans support. Is he kidding me? We had an election and the country wants to move left. Have the Republicans negotiated in good faith on one major piece of legalisation's so far? This is a case where he's worried more about his seat and his own personal gain than he is about doing his job and helping to fix the health care system for the country.
He was quoted today saying this via The Plumb Line:
The GOP’s latest strategy is to aggressively link the White House-backed energy and health care initiatives with the “already failed” stimulus package, and to say that health care reform is doomed unless it’s “bipartisan.”
Now the GOP strategy has picked up an assist from an unlikely — or perhaps likely — figure: Blue Dog Dem Dan Boren.
In remarks in his district that were reported by The Oklahoman, Boren aggressively trashed the Obama-backed cap and trade bill, said it could exacerbate the country’s economic problems, and challenged Obama to be “bipartisan” on health care.
Boren on health care:
“If health care reform is going to happen, it’s going to have to happen in a bipartisan way,” he said. “It’s really up to the president.
It’s worth noting that calls for “bipartisanship” have stopped having any meaning. Multiple Republicans have said that health care reform won’t have bipartisan support unless the White House’s main goals are ditched, so demands that Dems be more bipartisan basically mean “do nothing,” or “dump your top priorities because Republicans want you to.”
Greg Sargent summed it up nicely. The Republicans already said they want to kill the bill and tried to bring up images of Waterloo so the President and the Democratic party will be weakened. Boren's argument is hollow and a lie. That's typical behavior coming from the Blue Dogs and pointless I might add.
