The public option: how many of us remember when and why it died?

[JayhawkSD]

45. Dems protect Republicans from their own ineptitude.

How many times did Harry Reid not bring a bill to the floor because he did not have enough votes to pass it? I submit that if he had brought some of them to the floor and let the Republicans vote them down, and then announced that Republicans were standing in the way the public would be a lot more fed up with Republicans than they are. If Reid and Pelosi had stood their ground and vowed to let health care reform go down in defeat rather than weaken it by including Republican demands, and let it be voted down a couple of times to the tune of public outrage, Republicans would have paid a price. Democrats, Obama chiefly among them, have spent far too much time placating the Republicans and have weakened far too much important legislation. The continual giving in to blackmail has not served this nation well.

Democrats whine about haow Republicans have "blocked important legislation," but in fact, they have done far more damage in the legislation they have not blocked but have weakened. The "stimulus bill" that was something like 40% tax cuts and far too small to be as effective as it needed to be, so that the best that Democrats can say of it is, "Well think of where we'd have been without it." The "health care reform" bill that allows states to opt out of providing Medicaid for their citizens and had no public option. Those are things that the Democrats agreed to.