As the Times and Politico report today, the White House is now backing a unilateral approach to health care reform. How did we reach this impasse? Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny report:
Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans' purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month's Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.
Translation: It's all the GOP's fault.
But not just the GOP! Here's today's Post story on the intra-Democratic debate on the public option:
"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We've gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don't understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."
"It's a mystifying thing," he added. "We're forgetting why we are in this."
Translation: The left is to blame, too.
Is the White House ever responsible for its political miscalculations?
