Our story so far: Democrats offer up a bipartisan proposal to fund advance care counseling and Republicans turn it into a plan to create death panels. Democrats agree to fund home nurse care and Republicans tar it as a secular brainwashing program. 
Democrats take Republican concerns about cost containment seriously by setting up the Independent Medicare Advisory Council and Republicans start screaming about “rationing.” Democrats give in on a public option and accept a co-op program in its place and Republicans dig in and finally announce that they’re just going to oppose everything no matter what Democrats do.
The White House has taken notice:
Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.
….Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.
“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”
OK then. Obviously Emanuel said this with presidential approval, so the question is: did Obama ever expect anything different? Was his calm, deliberative, bipartisan sales pitch genuine, or did he know it would fail all along?
We’ve been asking this question ever since the primaries — does he really believe he can sweet talk Republicans into cooperating with him? — and we still don’t know the answer. Obama is a guy who plays his cards very close to his chest. But the next couple of months should give us a clue. If he really believed it, then he probably doesn’t have much of a Plan B and the next stop for this train is Chaosville. But if it was mostly an act, then his next step is obvious: he’ll make a barnstorming public case that he made a good faith effort to work with Republicans but they were just completely intransigent. He’ll attack them mercilessly and do everything he can to whip public opinion into a lather against the obstinate, obstructionist, reactionary GOP.
If that was his plan all along, it wouldn’t be a bad one. He correctly divined a long time ago that the American public was weary of endless partisan fighting and wanted a break, and he rode that insight to victory. Regardless of his own beliefs, then, it meant he had to start his presidency by demonstrating a genuine effort to work across the aisle, and he had to keep it up long enough to show he was serious. Only if it plainly failed would he be able to turn the screws and start fighting on pure partisan lines.
Will it work? Stay tuned.
