If
this doesn't demonstrate the absence of those mythological Republican "moderates" (I hear one was sighted riding a pink unicorn recently), I don't know what does.
After months of negotiations, debate, and partisan wrangling, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will unveil his health care reform framework today. Baucus, who delayed the entire legislative process for months, simply so he could work with Republicans on a bipartisan solution, has managed to garner a grand total of zero GOP votes for his proposal.
[...]
As for the committee chairman, this has to be pretty embarrassing. He invested months and countless hours in this, holding up health care reform with painful delays. Indeed, don't forget that the Finance Committee was supposed to be the first committee to pass reform.
Baucus, it appears, has very little to show for his efforts.
In short, the efforts of Max Baucus and other "(radical) centrist" Democrats to attract "moderate" Republican support for health insurance reform has proven to be a miserable failure. Why did it fail? Perhaps because of what we've been saying for many months now, that today's Republican Party no longer has room for centrists, moderates, "radical centrists," "country club Republicans," "liberal Republicans," or whatever you want to call them. Today, the Republican Party has become - and I say this with deep sadness, as someone who started off as a Teenage Republican in Connecticut in the late 1970s) - the party of Glenn Beck (and his "9/12" followers), Rush Limbaugh (and his "dittoheads"), Pat Robertson (and his followers like Bob McDonnell), James Inhofe (and his fellow science deniers), Joe Wilson (and his fellow screamers), Dick Cheney (and his fellow members of the "Dr. Evil Lookalike Club"), George W. Bush (and the members of his "Mission Accomplished" fan club), and the like. Don't say we didn't warn you.
