Skip to content

Spinning Like Tops

by digby

Savannah Guthrie on MSNBC just said:

I think there will be courtshipo of those moderate Senators, but look, one thing I heard this morning here at the White House was that the insurance company report, the Price Waterhouse Cooper report, has actually been helpful to some extent (now granted this may be spin but let me just tell you what their argument is) is helpful because some of the liberal Senators who are concerned that the Baucus bill was just way too easy on the insurance companies, now have some cover. If the insurance companies think it’s so objectionable that they’re getting off the train and writing this report and signalling they’re no longer at the bargaining table on health reform, it must be something that really hurts them.

So that’s been helpful, the White House say, in terms of getting some of the more liberal senators that they are trying to get on board with health care reform.

Well played Jim Messina, well played. If he and his former boss Max Baucus cooked this up with the insurance companies, you have to give them credit. On the other hand, it assumes that everyone believes that the liberal Senators are all idiots, which I’m sure is true in the Village, but elsewhere not so much. It’s definitely spin. The question is by whom, for whom?

It looks like we are about to see a kabuki swing dance on six foot stilts. Should be entertaining.

By the way, if Olympia Snowe can say in advance that her vote to pass the Baucus bill doesn’t foreshadow how she will vote on the final bill, there is absolutely no reason that every single Democrat can’t say the same thing about cloture: they can all say that their vote to have an up or down vote doesn’t foreshadow how they will vote on the final bill. Obviously, there is no requirement to be “consistent.” Snowe just proved it.

.

Published inUncategorized