Grassley Mole Theory

by digby

Seems the Democrats are scratching their heads and wondering if America’s avuncular old tweeter, Chuck Grassley, was playing them all along. Karen Tumulty writes:

If there had ever been any hope for a truly bipartisan health-care bill this year, it came in the person of one cantankerous and quirky Iowan. For months, much to the consternation of many of his fellow Republicans, Charles Grassley, the ranking minority member on the Senate Finance Committee, had continued to negotiate behind closed doors with chairman Max Baucus and four other members of the panel. No Republican received more TLC from Barack Obama, who has met with Grassley three times at the White House and called him three times more just to keep in touch. White House aides reckoned that if Grassley, with his conservative credentials, could find a health-care deal he liked, a significant number of other Republicans might be persuaded to climb aboard. “Health care not only is 16% of the gross national product, but it touches the quality of life of every household as few others do,” Grassley declared back in April. “I’m doing everything I can to make the reform effort in Congress a bipartisan one.” That was then. In August, Grassley — who is up for re-election next year — held town halls and constituent meetings in 30 counties. While the sessions never got as raucous as they did in some other parts of the country, Grassley’s constituents turned out by the thousands to tell him how little they thought of his efforts back in Washington. One sign in the small town of Adel read “Thank God Patrick Henry Did Not Compromise.” Over the course of the recess, Grassley began sounding less like a potential Obama ally and more like the enemy army. When the Iowa Senator actually gave credence to the absurd notion that the House version of the legislation might allow the government to decide when, in his words, to “pull the plug on Grandma,” Democrats decided he was past the point of any hope. And then came Grassley’s late-August coup de grâce, a campaign fundraising letter. “The simple truth is that I am and always have been opposed to the Obama Administration’s plans to nationalize health care,” Grassley wrote. “Period.”…Some Democrats now wonder whether Grassley had been toying with them — and particularly his good friend Baucus — from the start. One joked that Baucus needs to see the movie He’s Just Not That into You.

Surely nobody is suggesting that Grassley was acting in bad faith? That would be a shocking breach of Senate ethics and an abuse of his friendships across the aisle. I’m shocked. Republicans are usually so reliably above board.

I find it hard to believe that after the stimulus anyone in the White House entertained the notion that they could get a bipartisan bill, but I suppose it’s always possible. More likely, in my mind, is that they needed bipartisan support to justify the inevitable scaling down of their own campaign’s reform plan and what would come out of the House once they appeased the medical industry. The Republicans aren’t playing along and are going to leave the administration out there whoring all by themselves. It’s not exactly a pretty sight.

This could, of course, come out quite differently if the President decides that it’s more in his political self-interest to pass real health reform than protect the medical industry from a loss of profits and the Democrats from a loss of campaign contributions. The Republicans are making that a much tougher choice than they expected.

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