That’s me fixing Roll Call’s title for it:
Months ago, Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), chairman of the Blue Dogs’ health care task force, told House leaders and chairmen they’d better include Blue Dogs in the writing of their health care bill. But that didn’t happen.
Now, Ross has become the rallying point for a massive revolt against the leadership health care plan and may be the biggest obstacle to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) oft-stated desire to pass it by the August recess.
This is, of course, nonsense. Mike Ross voted for the obscene debt bill masquerading as a stimulus package; and he’s used up his free pass by getting to vote against cap-and-trade. He’ll break on health care; there are a bunch of other fake ‘conservative’ Democrats who’ll need the cover, and one mustn’t be greedy, right? More to the point, Ross and his ilk like to pretend that they don’t know that the reason why there are so many tax-and-spend Democrats in positions of authority is because the Blue Dogs signed off on putting them there. This is all pure theater, in other words; and it’s theater as performed by actors who have a very low opinion of their target audience’s intelligence. I note all of this solely so that nobody is surprised when Ross comes out of a meeting with a fake grin, an agreement on a trigger mechanism for imposing state-run health care, and a breezy assurance that rationing old people’s medical treatment is the best way forward for fiscal conservatism.
And I can’t wait to see the person we run against him in AR-04 next year.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.