A final push or more dithering?

Politics Daily reports Obama Invites GOP to the Table on Health Care Reform Bill02/07/10:

Obama told CBS News' anchor Katie Couric in an interview taped before the Super Bowl that "I want to ask them [the Republicans] to put their ideas on the table, and then after the [congressional] recess, which will be a few weeks away, I want to come back and have a large meeting, the Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."

The Washington Post reported that Obama had invited Republicans to take part in a half-day summit that would be televised live later this month, just as his meeting last week with House Republicans at their Baltimore retreat was open to cameras.

Hope springs eternal, as they say. If the White House uses some such ploy to put the Republicans on the spot for opposing a popular health care reform, this could work for both passing a bill and for setting up the fall Congressional campaigns in a favorable way for the Democrats.

But it doesn't sound good at all to me given this administration's record that they are talking about a delay of even more weeks topped off by more negotiations to achieve a "bipartisan" consensus that's never going to happen. And this far into the process, the fact that the White House still seems to be dithering publicly on what they want to see in the bill tells me that may well be sticking with the one that they did come down hard in favor, the Obama-Lieberman Senate bill.

Tags: health care reform, obama administration

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