Been trying to craft a post today on the Democrats mad rush to pass a bill, any bill, just so they can do what they (public opinion polls notwithstanding) believe Americans have long been wanting Congress to do, you know, complete the unfinished business of the New Deal and enact massive health care reform.  It seems their zeal to overhaul our nation’s health care system has superseded concern about the particular contents of said reform and their commitment to a transparent political process.

Rather than post the bill online and have our representatives return to their various jurisdictions to hear what their constituents have to say about the bill, they prefer to craft in behind closed doors (with only Democrats present), while making back room deals to secure the support of wavering Senators.  No televised negotiation on C-SPAM as per a certain Democrat’s campaign promise.

Two bloggers (actually one blogger and one blogress) have offered succinct explanations for the Democrats failure to rally popular support behind their efforts at overhaul.

Jim Geraghty faults proponents for refusing “to listen to the skeptics or engage those who think it’s a bad idea“:

Every step of the process, the leaders of the majority have engaged in the worst possible responses — avoiding meetings with skeptical voters, clinging to talking points in the face of counterarguments, attacking the motives of the critics, demonizing them as extremists, un-American, etc. If they had treated the concerns that the plan will only expand bureaucracy and increase costs with respect from the beginning, the debate would be quite different today.

Ann Althouse doesn’t believe Democrats made the case for the various reforms put forward:

People just don’t want this bill. I think the big mistake was skipping the step of winning public support for a particular plan. It wasn’t enough that people believed there was a problem. People needed to believe the solution wasn’t worse than the problem. We were supposed to look away and trust them. The trust was never won, never earned. It’s been a horrific mess, and it just looks messier and messier as time wears on.

Emphasis added.   Perhaps, they would have won that trust had they (as per Geraghty above) handled concerns with respect rather than labeling those articulating them as astroturf paid for by the demon insurance companies.

GOP delay tactics slow Dems on health care votes

At least one of those “delay tactics” sounds a lot like an Obama campaign promise:

GOP Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had sought approval to require that any amendment considered by the Senate must be offered 72 hours in advance and with a full cost report.

When he was rebuffed by Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, Coburn invoked his right to require that an amendment by another Democrat be read aloud. That sent the Senate into limbo, since the amendment by Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders was 767 pages long.

Sounds like reading lengthy legislation aloud is the only way to get legislation read at all in the transparent Washington of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

Kudos, Senator Coburn.  Now, just make sure to invoke your right to require that any legislation be read aloud before the Senate votes on it.  Wonder if he could require that all Senators be present for the reading lest their vote be tallied as “Nay.”

Whenever a mainstream conservative blogger addresses attempts by right-wing fringe groups to exclude gays from our movement, his commentary reflects the experiences Bruce and I have had with our fellow denizens of the rightosphere.   Our fellow bloggers may not support state recognition of same-sex marriage or oppose the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell Policy, but they do welcome our presence and link our posts.

Ed Morrissey, who has long made gays welcome on the right, is the latest to take on those who would exclude a gay conservative outfit from a mainstream conservative event.  Responding to some social conservatives who have been “circulating” e-mails calling GOProud “a crypto-Leftist group seeking to infiltrate and weaken conservative policies” (and objecting to their co-sponsorship of CPAC), the blogger formerly known as Captain Ed gives us the facts:

However, that doesn’t match up with the group’s stated legislative priorities, which do not go any further than most of the conservative and libertarian groups that regularly attend and sponsor the conference.

While noting that social conservatives may quibble with two of those priorities, Ed finds

platform could be just as easily adopted at a Tea Party as at GOProud, and would receive rousing support from the floor at CPAC coming from any other entity. It’s not a far-Left or crypto-Left agenda at all, but a good, solid recitation of conservative principles and fiscal responsibility.

In other words, we have at least an 80% agreement on the major issues facing our country between mainstream conservatives and this sponsor of CPAC.

Reminds me of something attributed to the Gipper, “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.”

Ed “asked Lisa DiPasquale, the director of CPAC, for a response to the controversy”:

CPAC is a coalition of nearly 100 conservative groups, some of which may disagree with one another on a handful of issues.  But, at the end of the day, we all agree on core conservative principles.  As you may know, GOProud was founded by a former member of the Log Cabin Republicans who left the group because he thought they were doing a disservice to their constituency by not adhering to conservative and Republican principles.

Emphasis added.  Sounds like a rousing endorsement of inclusion to me and a reiteration of Ronald Reagan’s vision for the right.

In a must-read piece at BigHollywood, my friend Charles Winecoff explores an aspect of the Kevin Jennings kerfuffle that we have only touched on here and which other conservative bloggers (save perhaps Ed Morrissey) have all but ignored.  Not only does Charles call out Media Matters for their name-calling and bias (they’v been the left-wing outfit taking the lead in taking on the conservative blogs which have brought Jennings’s unsavory literary recommendations to light), but he also takes GLSEN (and by extension Jennings) to task for presenting a politicized view of homosexuality:

But what’s equally disturbing is the deadening, inhuman language of race/gender politics that is being foisted on unsullied, impressionable minds.  Teenagers should be exposed to the colors, ideas, moral quandaries, literary innovations, and expansive worldviews of great authors - gay and straight, black and white, male and female - not the narrow, detached, theoretical manipulations of bitter Marxist hacks.

This omnipresence of PC rhetoric leads Charles to ask:

More importantly, where is the art?  Where are the profound, humanistic thoughts that would – and should – qualify this as literature fit for school kids?

It ain’t just the sexual references which make this stuff so inappropriate.  And Charles reiterates the point that other bloggers have made about how the material that has recently come to light is indeed most inappropriate for schoolchildren:

In 2007, Camenker [Brian Camenker, the outspoken leader of MassResistance, the pro-family group based in Massachusetts] complained that, ”A federal judge ruled that schools can show picture books to elementary school children about homosexual romance.”  If only the GLSEN-approved books stopped there.  Instead, these clunky tracts neglect love in favor of (far less universal) sexual practices that have nothing to do with the birds and the bees – and everything to do with (what is very often) compulsive adult behavior better suited to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders than to a seventh grade reader. . . .

“Tolerance” pushers have taken the intimacy out of sex and love, and turned the hardened, clinical dregs into a grim manifesto.

This is not the first time we’ve see gay activists promoting a version of sex without emotional connection.  But, it’s more than just about sex, it’s about politics as well.  ”Schools,” Winecoff asserts, “do not need to be ‘queered.’  Gay kids are still kids (who deserve the same respect and protection as their peers).”

Read the whole thing.

On the AIG thing, all these contracts were written well before I took office, but ultimately I’m now the guy who’s responsible to fix it. And one of the things that I’m trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame. . . .  And the key thing is for everybody just to stay focused on doing the job instead of trying to figure out who you can pass blame on to.

Barack Obama, Tonight Show, March 2009

Well, let’s see. You guys are drawing down $10, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it’s gone through in decades, and you guys caused the problem. And we’ve got ten percent unemployment. Why do you think people might be a little frustrated.

Barack Obama, 60 Minutes, December 2009

Emphasis added.  With his poll numbers tumbling, looks like the president is trying to spread the blame around.