Washington Post reporter Ben Pershing during today's online Q&A:

Obama and other Democrats have made a point recently of arguing that some of the GOP's ideas are already incorporated into the Democrats' bills -- that the existing bills already represent compromises, so it makes no sense to scrap them. Ezra Klein wrote a good post on this yesterday.

Washington Post reporter Ben Pershing, a few questions later:

It's hard to say which side is putting preconditions on the health-care summit. Is it Obama, who says he won't throw out the existing bills (that passed both chambers already)? Or is it Republicans, since the Boehner-Cantor letter contained several specific preconditions for the meeting? Seems that both sides are digging in their heels. It's almost as though neither party really wants to compromise ...

Impressive how Pershing so quickly goes from noting that the existing bill already contains Republican ideas and constitutes a compromise to suggesting that “both sides are digging in their heels” and “neither party really wants to compromise,” isn't it?

Here's the background:

House Republican Leader John Boehner and Whip Eric Cantor sent White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel a letter about the summit in which they asked the White House to take “off the table” the prospect of passing health care legislation through the reconciliation process and to “agree to start over,” “scrapping the House and Senate health care bills.” Their letter included not a single word expressing openness to progressive health care proposals, or a willingness to make concessions.

In response, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement saying “The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He's open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny.”

And yet Ben Pershing thinks it's “hard to say which side is putting preconditions on the health-care summit.”

I suppose “we'll only negotiate if you scrap your proposals entirely” and “no, everything should be on the table” are both technically “preconditions.” But there's a vast difference between the two, and Pershing does not serve Washington Post readers, or the truth, by pretending there isn't.

(The Boehner/Cantor letter and the Gibbs response are both conveniently available on the Washington Post's web page.)