Reflexive Village Idiocy

by digby

Ok, here’s a totally predictable Villager discussion:

Wolf Blitzer: Gloria, if the president caves on this public option, this government run insurance company that would compete with the private insurance companies. What kind of reaction would he get from within his own party.

Gloria Borger: Well, I think it depends of course on what he caves to, if you end up with non-profit cooperatives it might make it very palatable to some conservative Democrats, but I’ll tell you Wolf, I’ve been talking to some of the more liberal Democrats in the House and I think he would face pretty much a full scale revolt from those Democrats who say that the public option is the cornerstone of health care reform. So he has to balance those two things.

But remember, Bill Clinton did that with welfare reform and he got credit for passing that legislation. So far, the White House…

Wolf Blitzer: It didn’t hurt him on welfare reform to go against the left.

Huh? Do they not understand that welfare reform was passed with huge numbers of Republicans? Do they think that will happen with health care reform? Or perhaps they think Obama will get credit for ensuring that health care reform fails if he can blame it on liberals?

This debate gets stupider by the minute.

Another case in point:

LIMBAUGH: And you’re gonna have reports, who knows how often, on your work, patient by patient, and somebody in Washington is gonna say whether or not you’re doing quality work. And if it’s judged that you’re doing quality work — and I’ll guarantee you this: The odds are that if you are a Republican doctor and you have not donated to Democrats, and there’s no record of you making campaign contributions to Democrats or Obama, your work will not be judged as often as quality as Democrat doctor donors’ work will be judged as quality.

It burns.

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