The McMedia infatuation with John McCain continues

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The McMedia infatuation with John McCain continues after his Sunday appearance on Meet the Press (why doesn't NBC just rename it "Sundays With John McCain" since David Gregory has dropped all pretense of being a journalist). Today there is a heavily promoted piece at the right-leaning Politico blog. Jed Lewison reports at Daily Kos:

In a heavily promoted piece on Politico (it had the second-most prominent spot as of Sunday evening), Patrick O'Connor reports on a proposal by John McCain to amend reconciliation to require 60 votes for any changes to Medicare. This, according to O'Connor, could stop the health care reform in its tracks. He writes:

Democrats are trying to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare to pay for their health care bill, something that wouldn't be possible under McCain's proposal.

Setting aside O'Connor's GOP-friendly framing of Medicare cost-savings (he makes it sound like benefits would be cut, which isn't the case), his thesis is absurd on its face.

For starters, if McCain's proposal actually would kill health reform, only a moron would believe that Democrats would enact it while they are trying to pass health care reform.

But O'Connor is also neglecting another important fact: reconciliation will probably not be used to pass the entire health care reform package. Instead, the House will pass the Senate's version of the health care bill, and reconciliation will be used to amend the Senate bill.

Another way of looking at this: John McCain is whistling in the wind while walking backwards, and for some reason, the news focuses on the melody he is carrying…instead of the fact that he is whistling in the wind while walking backwards.

There are other things wrong with the Politico stenography reporting of GOP talking points. Republicans have opposed Medicare/Medicaid since the inception of the programs and have sought to eliminate the programs ever since. Republican Congresses under George W. Bush voted to reduce Medicare benefits.

As reported previously here The GOP Road to Ruin and here Update: The GOP Road to Ruin, Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republican Party‘s budget guy, has proposed a GOP "Roadmap to America's Future (Ruin)" this year that would essentially get rid of social security and Medicare in the long run. It slashes both programs dramatically and then privatizes them. So good-bye Medicare safety net. Good-bye social security safety net. The Republicans are proposing to get rid of them. For John McCain and the Republicans to at the same time cast themselves as the defenders of Medicare, given their history of opposition to Medicare, defies credulity. It is ludicrous.

Secondly, the Republican talking point that reconciliation is only used for small issues is patently false. Both of the massive Bush tax cuts for corporations and the super-wealthy were passed by reconciliation, as was the prescription drug corporate welfare benefit to big Pharma (Medicare Part D). The combined effects of these reckless Republican proposals brought the American economy to its knees in September 2008 in the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. There was nothing "small" about the effects of these reconciliation matters.

According to the Congressional Research Service, since 1980 reconciliation has been used to enact legislation 19 times, and 3 other reconciliation bills were vetoed by President Clinton. http://budget.house.gov/crs-reports/RL30862.pdf As reported here Senator Obstruction, Jon Kyl, is a pants on fire liar, health care and reconciliation actually have a lengthy history. "In fact, the way in which virtually all of health reform, with very, very limited exceptions, has happened over the past 30 years has been the reconciliation process," says Sara Rosenbaum, who chairs the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University. Health Care No Stranger To Reconciliation Process : NPR.

This GOP talking point is a flat out lie. Yet the media villagers (like Politico) and Beltway bloviators are aiding and abetting this GOP lie by constant repetition of the lie in the media echo chamber.

Finally, what Politico and the rest of the McMedia fail to recognize is that the object of their infatuation, John McCain, is irrelevant within his own political party, and is irrelevant in Congress. McNasty's angry tirades (getting snotty with the President at the Health Care Forum last week for example) are a cry for relevancy from his political base, the media villagers and Beltway bloviators who still adore him. Without the McMedia, McCain would fade away.

UPDATE: Lawrence O'Donnell summarizes the above points on reconciliation in this segment of Countdown:

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