How can Democrats be expected to sit down and negotiate with folks like this?
Be mindful that the two Senators discussed below are supposed to be at the center of health-care talks!
Democrats hope to persuade the public that Republicans are to blame for the stalemate and shift opinion in favor of an overhaul. They want to build enough momentum to win support from a small number of moderate Republicans, in particular the two senators from Maine.
Mr. Enzi charged in a radio address Saturday that Democrats are “cutting hundreds of billions from the elderly” and planning “to limit or deny care based on age or disability of patients.” In a fund-raising letter, Mr. Grassley exhorted supporters to “help stop ‘Obama-Care.'” The senators are two of the three Senate Finance Committee Republicans on the “Gang of Six” health-care negotiators.
“If you’re sitting at a table negotiating in good faith, then you probably don’t send out mailers saying, ‘Help me stop Obama-care.’ That’s just common sense,” Mr. Axelrod said. The two senators’ actions, he said, “suggested they don’t want to participate” in bipartisan talks. “They’re satisfied with the status quo. We are not,” Mr. Axelrod said.
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 
The President is well known for his conciliatory nature. He will continue to offer his hand to republicans who would gladly chop it off; until the very last second. Then, and only then, will he force the issue and get the damned bill passed.
Let me get this straight: A Republican sends out a mailer which you consider to be misleading because it opposes Obama care. Therefore, Republicans are not to be negociated with in good faith. Now stupid, How hypocritical. I ask: To what extent were Republicans allowed to participate in drafting the legislation to begin with? Were all their ideas rejected because they were not Pelosi’s ideas? To what extent were Republicans invited to participate in drafting the non-stmulus bill?
During the Bush years, did any democrat send out misleading information in mailers regarding the patriot act, fisa, the war in iraq? If so, did you throw a hissy?
I imagine the answer is no.
Finally, are you absolutely certain that the claims the senator makes are untrue? Afterall, all government programs are rationing programs–foodstamps, housing assistance, etc… If you are going to cut costs, you have to look at the last six months of life (read elderly). So while this might not be what Obama tells you he intends–assuming he has actually read the bill–we can be sure that rationing will be an unintended consequence. Simple common sense tells one this.
I think you missed my point. (BTW, the GOP got lots of what they wanted in the stimulas bill and then never voted for it, lest we forget.)
I care less if they are against Obama’s plan. In the end they are not voting with us anyway. What I do not like is the two faced way they play politics. This is second time in about a week I make this same point.
The two GOP Senators in the story are those from the six major players that have strived for weeks to cut a deal. These Finance Committee members are working to get a deal, but then two of the members go off on these tangents that they know not to be true. They are making these points for political purposes.
Last week I wrote about that here.
From that post comes this editorial I sourced about Grassley.
If only similar backbone were shown by politicians like Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican principal in the Senate’s Gang of Six health care negotiations. Instead of helping to educate his constituents or move the debate ahead, he provided more red meat for fulminators, erroneously insisting that the rival House health care bill features “a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”
Mr. Grassley now insists he never uttered the “death panels” canard at the heart of Sarah Palin’s health care diatribe. But he said what he said. He and the rest of us are stuck with the grandma line, even as he supposedly is pursuing reasonable compromise in Washington. Back home, the senator also conveniently overlooks his support for the 2003 Medicare drug subsidy that included the sort of counseling for end-of-life issues and care found in the current House bill.
um, I think the mailer said there was no way he (Grassley) would vote for Obamacare, so yes he was negotiating in bad faith. And he knew better and then repeated the throw grandma from the train lie at a rally
want some more examples of Republican “good faith?”
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/how-senate-republicans-obstruct-health-care
http://www.slate.com/id/2223023/
But it’s Obama and the Democrats own fault for getting rolled. Dukakis and Kerry in the campaigns, Obama on health care, how many time will the Dems allow the lies and misrepresentations to build and set and then try to fight back, too little too late. Get a clue guys (and gals)!
It was amusing to see Michael Steele take some of the republicans own medicine at his town hall. Of course when someone asks a republican a tough question, they’re disruptive or union goons
By the way, Michael Steele was born in Kenya, I seen it on the internets
So, to sum it all up into a nice, tidy package:
We’re going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head said he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempts them from abiding by it, signed by a President who smokes and is also exempted, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that’s nearly broke.
What could possibly go wrong?