President Obama says he wants biparitsan health reform legislation. And he's hardly alone. In Congress, on K Street, in the media--everybody seems to think legislation has to be bipartisan. But Ed Kilgore asks, as he often does, a very good question:
...if Barack Obama wants to conduct a bipartisan approach to universal
health care, what does that mean in terms of the public option? Killing
or watering down the public option in order to (maybe) attract the
support of Sen. Chuck Grassley, and not much of anybody else in the
congressional Republican ranks? Or maintaining it to appeal to
rank-and-file Republicans, who favor it despite the views of their
"leaders" and the polarized atmosphere in Washington?
Ed goes on to explain why a party-line vote does not, necessarily, a partisan bill make.