Healthcare session : 1st “half”
What a debate! It is because of things like this that we do politics, events that make us do this work despite the little money we earn. For the first time, I was made to watch the debate with the rest of the ST team, and the 7 hours was worth it.
For the first time, the debate was very clean, civil. There were no unnecessary distractions. Characters shone through and others faltered. If ever people want an introduction to what the parties are about, tell them to watch the clips of this mammoth health-care session.
The only disappointment that initially pist me off was with Senate leaders, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. They had terrible body language and were behaving like 10 year old girls not talking to each other. Leader McConnell was sitting with his arms folded and Leader Reid had the stench of arrogance.
Because of them, I thought it was going to be ugly. How wrong I was! This session had the notion of a sporting event. The first half was exclusively Republican. All the Democrats did was to say, “We agree on this and that.” They were spineless and pathetic.
A character who really stole the “first half” was Senator Tom Coburn. I have been told by some member of the team that he was a wing-nut from the right, but that was not how he came off at all. This guy oozed sincerity, something nobody else in the room had. He was passionate and very real. He reminds me of people like Representatives Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, whose politics we do not agree with but we respect their sincerity in service to our country.
Senator John McCain deserves very special mention for his substantial input. He pointed out the flaw that there were many “special deals” in the Senate bill which had little or nothing to do with healthcare. The Democrats were caught with their pants down here.
I saw Representative Eric Cantor perform today, and he was outstanding. He was cool calm and even though we heard all the points being recycled, one could still be impressed with the way that Representative Cantor made his case. Mark my words, this guy is headed for bigger things. Senator McCain made a huge mistake not giving him the VP nomination.
The star of the Democrats was the President. He was the only one that actually put up a fight against the Republican arguments. I liked some of his logic. For example he rebutted the Republican talking point of regulation driving the cost of things up by saying that we could make food significantly cheaper, if we get rid of the meat inspectors. But would you want that? That was well done.
In the first half, the Republicans were very strong in their arguments, but they just could not kill the argument. The reason was that they kept hovering back to talking points which were obviously planned and lacked substance. They kept on harping about the mandate without going for the jugular early. They spoiled their arguments by keep on mentioning things like ,” The American people do not want this bill” and kept complaining about the bill being over 2000 pages long.
President Obama was enough to hold the Republicans off. The only one that he could not beat was the amazing Senator Coburn, so he absorbed some of Senator Coburn’s ideas. The attacks from the Republicans were relentless and they came thick and fast. The first half for the Democrats was so bad that VP Biden intervened in frustration, stating that the ideas weren’t that different, but the approach was.
So what would happen in the Second half? It was something that we would have to watch to believe. All this was thanks to a blunder from a very senior Republican, which game the Democrats with the ammo to attack….
For more, read the 2nd half!
