Hillarysworld

House Minority Leader John Boehner and Whip Eric Cantor may be threatening to pull out of President Obama’s health-care summit, but apparently it’s a bluff: Greg Sargent says that, after talking to senior Republican aides and advisers, “the chatter in GOP circles is that it’s unlikely that Republicans will pull out of the health-care summit.” Republicans are sticking it out because they’re worried that pulling out will make their the stubbornness, and not the health-care bill they hate, the story. One strategist says Boehner and Cantor threatened to withdraw in the hope that the White House will alter conditions somewhat in their favor.

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The Plum Line

Greg Sargent's blog

Republicans Unlikely To Pull Out Of Health Summit, GOPers Say

After talking to a bunch of senior Republican aides and advisers on background, I can report that the chatter in GOP circles is that it’s unlikely that Republicans will pull out of the health care summit, despite GOP leadership hints to the contrary.

The basic view is that the President would have to say or do something dramatic and eye-popping that would give Republicans an unequivocal pretext for pulling out. GOPers doubt Obama will be clumsy enough to do this, given that the White House clearly wants the summit to happen for its own political purposes.

“I don’t see anybody pulling out at this point,” one senior GOP aide says. “You would have to have something serious to point to as a reason to pull out.”

Reps John Boehner and Eric Cantor sent a letter yesterday to the White House, laying out a number of conditions for Republican participation. The letter said that if Obama was unwilling to scrap the current health reform proposals and start over, Republicans “would rightly be reluctant to participate.”

But one senior GOP strategist who regularly advises the GOP Congressional leadership said this move was more about pressuring the White House to alter the conditions somewhat in the GOP’s favor, and putting responsibility for the optics of the event on the White House, than about any real threat to pull out.

“They put the ball squarely in the president’s court,” this strategist says. “But the anticipation is he’s going to do this in the right way.”

A senior GOP leadership aide involved in plotting party strategy added that Republicans were unlikely to pull out because it would make their own intransigence, rather than Obama’s efforts at a course correction, the story. “After a year of demonstrating a commitment to a partisan agenda it’s on the White House to prove otherwise,” this aide said. “We aren’t interested in doing their work for them.”

“We don’t make a habit out of turning down invitations from the President regardless of the merit of the exercise,” the aide continued. “Although we’re not excited about filming an infomercial for the President’s new `bipartisan’ PR campaign.”

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The President, in today's impromptu press conference, refused to set aside the HC bill, rather asked for the parties to agree on baseline facts.

The Cheat Sheet at The Daily Beast seems to think that there is no standoff, and these two gentlemen will participate in the HC Summit at the WH.

Gonna be interesting!




-- Edited by Sanders on Tuesday 9th of February 2010 03:28:33 PM