From a piece by Thiessen that appeared in the February 23 print edition of The Washington Post headlined “Obama is the real obstructionist at his health-care summit”:
Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) says of this week's bipartisan health-care summit: “Sounds like the Democrats spell summit: S-E-T-U-P.” He's right -- the Blair House summit is a trap. If the objective really was to produce bipartisan compromise, Obama would not be using legislation crafted in a backroom that got virtually no Republican votes as the basis for the discussions. Nor would his secretary of health and human services have declared last week that the White House is still willing to fight for a public option, a proposal that died because of bipartisan opposition in the Senate.
The president's real objective is to paint GOP leaders as obstructionists -- so that Democrats have an excuse to ram through their health-care legislation using extraordinary parliamentary procedures
