Michelle Bachmann:
Bachmann repeated the myth, adopted early by Sarah Palin, that the health-care plans being debated in Congress would set up "death panels" to determine which old folks are entitled to health care. "Thank God that Sarah Palin said that," she told the callers. "These are true."....
She also suggested that it might be some kind of religious destiny that hardy souls such as herself are in Congress at this time.
"We all need to consider that in God’s timing that he may have allowed us, as members of Congress, to be in the position that we’re in just for this specific issue right now," she said. "Everything that all of us have worked together and labored for over the years, all of it could be undermined with this one bill. President Obama realizes that. The radicals that are on the pro-abortion left, they realize that. They could win it all. And the unborn, and the vulnerable, the disabled and those at the end of life could lose it it all."
But it was Bachmann’s fervent call to utilize prayer and fasting to beat back health-care reform efforts that was the true highlight of the call.
"That’s really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting," she told the listeners. "Remember: faith without works is dead. So we’re asking you to do all of it: pray, fast, believe, trust the Lord, but also act."
Tom Coburn:
Yesterday CNN’s Rick Sanchez aired a segment from a health care town hall where a weeping constituent explained to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that her husband’s health insurer refuses to cover his treatment for a traumatic brain injury. As the woman continued to cry, Coburn told her that his office would try to assist her individually. But, he added, "the idea that the government is the solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement."
Chuck Grassley:
[T]he ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee and member of the "Gang of Six" tasked with producing bipartisan health care legislation — "vowed not to vote for an ‘imperfect’" health care bill:
"Now is the time to do this right or not do it." ... "We need to slow down and do a little less," Mr. Grassley told another town-hall gathering in Pocahontas, Iowa, Monday afternoon. "We need to fix what’s broken and leave alone what’s working well." In an interview, he vowed not to vote for an "imperfect bill" that includes a public option or gives the government too much control over end-of-life issues.
In March, Grassley characterized himself as an honest negotiator, telling the Kaiser Family Foundation that "everything is on the table. ... You don’t negotiate when everything is not on the table...everything’s got to be on the table if you’re negotiating in good faith."
Grassley is hiding behind Steele, Bachmann, Coburn and the rest--i.e., the Republican base. And yet, as of August 19, this was what we were getting from the White House:
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today that Democrats are "absolutely not" giving up on a bipartisan effort.
"There are several more weeks to go in potential negotiations between Republicans and Democrats," Gibbs said. "I don't know why we would short-circuit any of that now."
It's not too late for Obama not to get punked by Grassley et al. on this. Give up this pretense that there can actually be a bipartisan reform bill that accomplishes anything of value, and help Reid and Schumer go it alone.
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