Kill the Beast

On the eve of the health care summit, CNN is the bearer of bad news for ObamaCare, the crucial voting block of Independents are screaming, "Kill the Beast."  A full 52% of Independents think Congress should start over while another 27% say stop working on health care altogether.  They are not the only ones though, Democrats appear to be joining the mob with 4 in 10 saying start over and another 10% saying stop all work on health care.  As you may have guessed, Republicans are overwhelmingly opposed with a mere 6% supporting the current legislation but 94% believe Congress should halt work on health care or start over from scratch.

More bad news for Kabuki theater, most believe the Democrats need to give up ground in order to gain bipartisan solutions:

Even though more people think Republicans are not doing enough to reach bipartisan consensus, 54 percent believe the Democratic party should take the first step toward developing bipartisan solutions to the country’s problems, the survey says. Forty-two percent say the GOP should take that first step.

Just over half of those questioned say the Democrats should give up more ground to achieve bipartisanship, while 43 percent want to see the GOP make more compromises.

“Americans feel the ball is in the Democrats’ court,” Holland added. “They may not be held responsible for the problem, but since they are in charge of the government, Americans appear to think they are responsible for the solution.”

The ball may be in their court but Democrats appear not to know what to do with it.  Both the House and the Senate appear to be engaged in a game of chicken each daring the other "you pass it," "no you,"  leaving Kent Conrad to declare health care dead.  Eric Cantor has been counting votes in the House and seems to agree with Conrad.  Cantor released a memo earlier today outlining the reasons he believes health care can not pass in the House.  Here's  the bottom line:

Cantor says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “will not be able to muster the votes needed to pass a Senate reconciliation bill in the House.”

He estimates that House Democrats will likely only be able to attract 202 votes out of the 255-member caucus, 15 votes below the 217-vote threshold they need to pass the bill.

Cantor blames weak anti-abortion language in the president’s health care proposal, as well as public sentiment as expressed in polling and the election results in the Massachusetts Senate special election.

Health care has been the B movie monster that continually resurrects from the dead.  There is no dead until  Obama accepts that he's lost or he loses his Democratic Congress.   Can he let it go?  Charles Krauthammer doesn't think so, "He thinks he needs heath care and because he believes in it and secondly because he thinks if he comes away with nothing after a year on health care he’ll be wounded in a way he’ll never recover.”