Chuck Grassley, when directly offered the hypothetical “Chuck, go write whatever you want into the bill” counter-factual responded thusly:
Chuck Todd asked Grassley whether he’d vote for the bill if it was a good piece of policy that he’d crafted but that couldn’t attract more than a handful of Republican votes. “Certainly not,” replied Grassley.
[…]
“I am negotiating for Republicans,” he said. “If I can’t negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I’m not a good negotiator.”
Implicit in this statement are two facts: a) Republicans are not going (and never planned ) to vote for health care reform, even if they write the bill, and b) Republicans are negotiating in bad faith because of (a), this meaning either they hope to kill the bill by negotiating it to death, or they just like talking to salesmen.
And yet, which party keeps on coming back up to the table, hoping this time they’ll manage to “negotiate” a bipartisan solution? Each time offering up a few more sacrificial lambs in the hope that, this time, the GOP will finally love them and offer true forgiveness? Exactly when does the GOP give up something? Exactly when do the Democrats stop giving in? (Answers visible only in the Teacher’s Edition: Never and Never.)
“Bipartisan” in the current situation means: that to which the Blue Dogs will acquiesce. Full Stop. You get those votes, you have achieved a bipartisan outcome. Period, the end. There is no bill sufficiently milquetoast to achieve a 75-80 vote margin that Grassley seems to implicitly claim is what’s required to “earn” his precious vote. To assume any health-care bill is going to achieve that kind of margin is utter lunacy. But this is the baseline at which “negotiations” are happening. Tells you a lot about the current fecklessness of the Democratic Party in the Senate.
True progress will only come when Harry Reid (and, for that matter, Rahm Emaneul) realizes this and begins to enforce fealty at cloture votes accordingly. You vote out of line on the cloture issue of a key policy initiative like this one, you lose all seniority, all committee assignments, and suddenly find yourself out working the boats with McNulty. You also find that you’re facing a well-funded primary challenge in the next round. Simple as that.
Lemkin 