Twice last week, President Obama ripped “naysayers” of his health care reform plan. Phase one of his health care blitz this week: Calling out his opponents more directly. Speaking to reporters at the Children’s National Medical Center here in Washington, Obama cited a remark that Sen. Jim DeMint said last week when speaking to a conference call of GOP activists about health care reform. DeMint, who described the issue as “D-Day for freedom in America,” was rallying the troops to push back on plans for government-run health care. “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo,” DeMint told the group, according to the Politico’s Ben Smith. “It will break him.”
Speaking this afternoon, Obama read DeMint’s quote verbatim, though he attributed it to a “Republican senator” and not to DeMint by name. “Think about that,” Obama said of DeMint’s remarks. “This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses and breaking America’s economy. And we can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care, not this time, not now.” Obama vowed to fight against “the politics of the moment.”
DeMint’s remarks provided an obvious opening to the White House to go after Republicans who have been attempting to slow down the work on health care reform by accusing them of doing so for political reasons. The problem: It’s not just Republicans asking to slow the process down. Plenty of key Democrats have suggested the process is moving too quickly, including Sen. Ben Nelson, who met with Obama last week at the White House, and Blue Dogs in the House who are concerned about the plan’s cost. So what will that do to the president’s message? Is Obama willing to publicly call out members of his own party in order to get the bill through Congress quickly?
It’s unlikely—but not impossible. So far Obama has left the Dem vs Dem squabble up to Organizing for America, a political group formed from the remnants of his presidential campaign. Last week, OFA began running pro-reform ads targeting both Republicans and Democrats on the importance of getting something done sooner rather than later. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was none-too-pleased to see the efforts targeting Dems, calling it a “waste of time.” Since then, the White House has sought to create a distinction between their GOP and Dem critics: Republicans, like DeMint, are slowing it down because of politics, while Democrats are trying find a solution. “I would not suggest that somebody that’s sitting at the table, working constructively to find a solution to these problems is more of a delay that somebody who goes out clearly to give a purely political speech,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters today.
UPDATE: DeMint responds: "If the actual legislation came close to matching the President's rhetoric, he would have no problem passing this bill with huge Democrat majorities in both chambers."
