THE SUMMIT: A BASIS FOR TEAM WORK?

OK, maybe I'm being cynical, but after watching Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), it appears that the Republican leadership is going to walk away from the spirit of this Health Care Summit. They will probably say something to the effect that "The President doesn't want work with us because he doesn't want to start over. He just lectured us."

During the Summit both Boehner and McConnell called on President Obama to scrap the health bill that's on the table. In spite of many areas of agreement - and there are many - the Republicans are looking to trash everything that's on the table. In my view, they're doing this primarily because they want to drag everything out into November. Why? Because they want to point to President Obama and the Democrats and say, "See, they can't get anything done. We wanted to start over, but ..."

Well, some times you don't need to start over as much as you need to make a few adjustments, as this comic makes clear.

Again, maybe I'm being cynical. But I'm not expecting anything positive from the Republicans tonight (not that I was expecting much to begin with). That's too bad. When the Republicans weren't trying to get in some campaign sound bytes (see Boehner's, McConnell's, and Rep. Paul Ryan's comments), they actually had some good ideas.

From what I heard, I actually think that the "team work" reference above is where Republicans and Democrats are at. Seriously, the ideas and challenges that both parties referenced aren't that far apart. Trying to score political points by making President Obama look like a failure in November is not good policy.

People are going bankrupt, dying, or not getting care that they should, every day. If the Republicans come out swinging tonight I hope the President presses for reconciliation.

- Mark

UPDATE, I: And it begins. Here's Senator John Thune (R-SD) saying that the GOP won't "fundamentally" be part of the health care process because of how it drives up costs. He essentially declares the summit a failure before it even ended.