Making Life Easy for the GOP

Here we go again.

The Democrats, who have apparently made a fetish of this, are once again letting the GOP off the hook as they cave in to a threatened Bush veto rather than force the Pubs to explain why they're against health care for sick kids.

Congressional Democrats have scrapped plans for another vote on expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, thus sparing Republicans from a politically difficult vote just weeks before elections this fall.

Before the summer recess, Democrats had vowed repeatedly to force another vote on the popular program. But Democrats say they have shifted course, after concluding that President Bush would not sign their legislation and that they could not override his likely veto.

So what? Right before an election, is success the point? Or is it important for the GOP to be seen insisting that letting sick kids die is an acceptable way to cut taxes? And once again we get the standard black-is-white spin we're used to from Republicans, only this time it's coming from House-Speaker-in-waiting Rahm Emanuel.

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said: “We are not going to change any votes on the children’s health insurance bill. We still don’t have enough to override a veto. Those who opposed this bill can face the voters and explain why they believe 10 million kids should not get health coverage.”

No, Rahm, that's what you just prevented. But never mind. The important thing is not to embarrass the Republicans in an election year. No, no, can't have that. The corporate press and right-wing punditry that is all we have left wouldn't like it.

And so I'm supposed to vote for the Democrats...why, again? Because things will be different? Um, how, exactly??

Comments

[eRobin]

I don't think they want to raise the issue of immigration, which the scummy GOP falsely ties to SCHIP every time the debate comes up. And they probably like having the loss to hold over the voters' heads during the campaign - it's strength through weakness!

[mick arran]

And they probably like having the loss to hold over the voters' heads...

Harry Reid as much as said that over the Iraq war, that Dem strategy was to make the war an election issue and they weren't going to do anything to end it because they wanted to hang it around Bush's neck.

That worked out well for them, didn't it?