Rope-A-Dope

by digby

… or just a dope?

I’ve been out of the loop so maybe I don’t understand the nuance of this. Could someone explain to me how this can possibly be?

Appearing at a town hall in his home state of Iowa, Sen. Chuck Grassley told a crowd of more than 300 that they were correct to fear that the government would “pull the plug on grandma.”

“There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life,” Grassley said. “And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you’re going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don’t have any problem with things like living wills. But they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

Ok.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs chose his words carefully on Thursday when asked to respond to comments made by Grassley, who is one of three key Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee tasked with crafting compromise legislation. Despite being heavily wooed by the White House, Grassley took up the fundamentally dishonest “death panels” line of attack at a town hall meeting on Tuesday.

Gibbs suggested the Iowa Republican talk to his Republican colleague, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska who deemed the death panel rumor an offensive myth designed to “gin up fear in the American public.”

But Gibbs wouldn’t go any further, telling reporters during Thursday’s briefing that the White House remained committed to working with Republicans to get health care reform passed.

It’s an unusual strategy. I’ve rarely found it to be very effective to try to negotiate in good faith with lunatic demagogues, but maybe it can work.

I certainly hope so, because if it doesn’t somebody is going to have a reputation for being a weak little chump. And it isn’t going to be Grassley.

Update: Did I mention lunatic demagogues?

On Wednesday, during Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) town hall in Winterset, Iowa, an attendee proudly noted that the Senator brought his personal copy of Glenn Beck’s book “Common Sense.” Grassley responded stating that he has read the book and that he intended to “pass it on”:

TOWN HALL ATTENDEE: I noticed that you have the book “Common Sense” with you today, I hope you share it with a lot more of those 535 people.

GRASSLEY: Well the reason I brought it is you’re supposed to pass it on to other people when you’re not reading it.

At the end of the town hall, Grassley gave an autographed copy of “Common Sense” to ThinkProgress and said “it’s something you gotta read a couple times.”

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