Obama barking up the wrong tree

It was right before the Super Bowl on Feb. 7 that President Obama reopened the health are reform issue, after it was all about jobs-jobs-jobs these past few weeks, by envisioning a half-day, bipartisan conference at Blair House on Feb. 25, supposedly to get Republicans to share. But to share in what?

There are many reasons why Republicans should be skeptical of Obama's mission to find enough positive, bipartisan overlap to craft and pass a health care reform bill.

• Democrats couldn't pass health care reform in 2009, even with Democrat majorities in the House and the Senate.

• The Democrat Senate and House versions of health care reform, both hammered out behind closed doors, are now stalled over the inability of Democrats to reconcile the two bills.

• Failure to pass health care reform is the fault of Democrats, as Republicans were denied repeated requests in 2009 to sit down and discuss their health care reform plans with Democrats.

• Obama says he is willing to start from scratch as long as the final result reaches his goals, but how could this be true when Obama likes the competing versions of both the Senate and House health are reform legislation? Even after the public, by and large, has rejected the President Obama's plan that represents a slow-motion federal government takeover of health care, President Obama still doesn't get it! As an ideologue-in-chief President Obama believes that the American people rejected his Democrat-inspired health care reform legislation because it lacked openness, transparency and bi-partisanship, when in fact the American people have a good idea of what the President's plan is all about and they don't like it.

It would be political suicide for Republicans to buy into a health care reform plan that many Democrats and much of the public rejects.

The way to get bipartisanship is to start from scratch. President Obama is not able to be anything but who he is, a hardheaded man of the Left.

Nancy J. Thorner

Lake Bluff