We WILL get a Public Option! Co-Op Kabuki Exposed! But it only works if you YELL LOUDER!

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Crossposted at Daily kos

    I am beginning to believe that President Obama has this figured out, and that we WILL get HCR and a Public Option.

    Why do I believe this? Let me explain.

    But first you have got to FIGHT, DAMMIT ROCKY!

    So here is some inspirational music to inspire Hope, and while you get riled up let me take you below the fold and reveal the genius of 9-sided chinese chess, exposed.

First of all, Co-Ops are a canard. They are designed to give small state Senators an out that lets them vote for HCR but not against the Insurers. In this way, we WILL get a HCR bill out of the Senate.

    At the same time, the GOP is playing the part that Obama has handed them. They are digging their own graves.

    This weekend Senator Chuck Grassley stated that he won’t vote for a bill that the other dittohead Republican Senators won’t get behind. This morning, Senator Jim DeMint (C Street-SC) spelled out the GOP plan on Neil cavuto’s dog and pony show today, which you could have guessed anyway. That plan is NO!

DEMINT: Whatever they call it Neil, this is a government takeover. They may try to call it a co-op. They can call it a public option, but you know they’re all on record saying they want a single payer government system, so any Republican now that helps them pass a bill is helping them pass a government takeover of health care.

thinkprogress.org

    As angry as Bipartisanship in the face of stupid makes us, it is working, believe it or not. The GOP is painting themselves into a corner of NO!

   What the GOP in their self imposed sound chamber doesn’t hear is that the rest of the country does NOT hate Obama the way they and their base does

  They are painting themselves into a corner where they can’t say anything but NO! without losing their base, and that will cost them dearly with the rest of the non- RW extremist majority of the country.

    So the Co-Op plan has nothing to do with caving to republiicans, and everything to do with getting a bill out of the Senate.

    Now, once a bill gets out of the Senate, it may be FUBAR, and you should Yell Like Crazy, but that is our part, and we should play it as best we can, because it serves a purpose. This is how we will push Progress Forward.

    The House, on the other hand, WILL pass a HCR bill WITH a Public Option.

    This is where the real fun (and 9 sided chinese chess) kicks in.

    Because the House-Senate Conference committee that merges the two versions of the bill WILL NOT INCLUDE small state Senators like Conrad, Enzi etc. . . As Dr. howard Dean has already explained.

    A hat tip to Dkos user ryeland who explained this so well in a Reclisted diary from yesterday that I think it bears repeating.

From a segment of Morning Shmo with Dr. Howard Dean.

Dean:     The president knows very well that you aren’t really going to have health care reform without a public option. But he also knows he has to get this out of the senate. And he’s got a very important member of the Finance Committee, Kent Conrad, who doesn’t want to vote for this bill if it has a public option in it. And he knows he’s not going to get any Republicans votes of any kind. So at the end of the day this bill’s going to be written by Democrats, it’s got to get out of the senate and you only need a few Democrats to take out the public option.

At this point in Howard’s explanation, Joe seemed to understand and started looking very interested:

JOE: Let me explain to people what you’re saying. The House is going to pass a version with a public option. The senate will pass a version without a public option. You get past the 60 votes. You go to reconciliation, you put the public option back in. And then you vote it on it and you only need 50 votes. And you get a public option.

RON BROWNSTEIN: Wow.

JOE: Is that what you’re saying?

DEAN: Basically, yes.

Bold text from original diary.

italics added by this diarist.

    So, here is the confusing part. The part where real change hangs, in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, on the edge of a knife.

    When HCR comes out of the conference committee, if it lacks a public option it WILL DIE in the House, if not, and if it does include a Public Option, it will force Blue Dogs to vote against their own party en masse, and they WILL NOT do this, as it WILL cost them severely when 2010 elections come up.

   But, if HCR does include a Public Option, as I suspect it will, when it goes back to the Senate, it will force Democratic Senators who oppose a Public Option to vote WITH Republicans, which they will be VERY reluctant to do.

    At the same time, we will be able to give small state Senators the cover of having opposed a Public Option initially, while letting them vote against it in the second version and final version that goes to the Senate, where a mere 51 vote majority will be enough to pass Health Care Reform.

   Thus, allowing them to have their cake and eat it too.

   We know the GOP will NOT vote for anything that hurts their corporate puppet masters no matter what. The White House knows this too. The White House (and red state Democrats) know that this reform can not succeed in the long term without a public option, and their own re-elections are at stake. Through this convoluted process, small state Senators and Blue Dogs will get to say they did what they could, the GOP will have cemented their place as the party of NO!, and the President will get a bill to his desk with a Public Option, end of life counseling, and all of the major reforms that We The People so desperatly need.

    Though the road is long and hard, we ARE on the right path still, and I feel more confident today than I did 2 weeks ago that we WILL get a bill with a public option before the year is out.

    Now, this doesn’t mean it is a done deal. We still need to Yell Louder, we still need to call, pressure and stand up, and we still need to do everything we have been doing to ensure that our voices are heard.

    But I think we have got this in the bag, and the rest of the show is just for the small state Senators and the party of NO!, so that they play their parts to a T, just like President Obama wanted them to all along.

   So don’t let on when it goes down just as I think it will.

   Act surprised. Play along, and for the love of the Gods, Yell Louder!

   Get up! Now get out there and FIGHT!

   I didn’t hear no bell!

Also crossposted at progressiveelectorate.com