The scandalous cynicism of Congressional politics

It was a pithy lede -- "Now they have an enemy" -- meant by the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly to describe the morphing if not amorphous central front in the healthcare wars. But stay tuned, for it will morph again, and quite possibly into oblivion.

"They" are described by the Post as the Obama administration, which is actually too pithy, since "they" include Capitol Hill's Democratic leadership as well; and the "enemy," of course, is the health insurance lobby -- a rather ideal enemy, having earned a position of public trust somewhere in the neighborhood of bankers, lawyers, politicians and pundits.

"The insurance industry has decided to lead the charge against health reform, and everyone recognizes their motives: profits," said the White House deputy communications director in the wake of the former's scurrilous but not unpredictable sneak attack, which took the form of an independent "study" almost laughable in its dependent creativity.

Boo! said the hired hit-man auditing firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers, which, having been instructed by the insurance lobby to ignore huge, compensating sections of the Senate finance committee's bill, went on to assure American families and especially America's seniors that they'll suffer horrendously through higher premiums and lost benefits.

The media's initial reporting of all this was, typically, sensationalistic. The White House has been betrayed, screamed the story lines, and the administration and its Congressional allies are now doubled over in acute anxiety. But reality was quite to the contrary: the White House was delighted, and many Capitol Hill Dems were downright ecstatic. The enemy had nakedly outed itself.

"The insurance industry ought to be ashamed of this report," said Sen. John Kerry, projecting the impossible, while Sen. Bob Menendez leveled the defense that the insurance lobby's new offense is just "one more indicator we're on the right track."

But then a funny -- and titanically revealing -- thing happened on the way to Congressional outrage.

Diehard supporters of a public option might have been justified in expecting that being "on the right track" would legislatively translate into rough Democratic unity on just that -- a public option -- especially since the insurance lobby detests nothing more strongly -- ah, sweet revenge -- and the Congressional Budget Office effectively says, If you really want to cut costs, create a government-run plan.

But what, in fact, was the Democrats' pushback? What was their retaliatory move to "crack down on the industry," as the Politico put it, that had so shamefully (but not ashamedly) misrepresented even moderate efforts at reform?

Why of course: The leadership leapt into action by calling for a repeal of insurers' antitrust exemption -- "one of the worst accidents of American history," as Sen. Chuck Schumer described it, as though the unconscionable thing had simply self-generated at some point, absent Congressional parents.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also chimed in, which is generally a mistake, and this time proved no exception to the rule. Repeal is "something that should have been done a long time ago," said Reid, while suffering a momentary lapse of memory as to who's been in Congressional charge for several years now.

At any rate, let's get back to the point to which I alluded in the opening. That is, this entire reform effort might well be headed into the irremediable breach. Because at the end of the Post's story came perhaps the more pertinent lede: "Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he would not support the finance panel's bill because of cost concerns. 'I'm afraid that in the end the Baucus bill is actually going to raise the price of insurance for most of the people in the country,' he said on Fox Business Network's 'Imus in the Morning' program."

Lieberman had added, too, that "I don't think I'm alone. I think there are other moderate Democrats who have a lot of questions about the bill." This bill. Max Baucus' finance committee bill, the most moderate piece of health-care reform imaginable.

True, that might have just been typical Joe, being as disagreeably Democratic, of sorts, as possible. But if he was genuine in his estimate of collective dissatisfaction, then legislation even close to the finance committee's bill could be dead on the Senate floor -- and even if Joe is alone, it shows you why the White House and Harry Reid are just wild about Olympia. She's not #61; she's #60. One slip, she's gone, and the headcount dives lethally to 59.

All the above also explains why so many on the left increasingly find Congressional progressives' continued blather about the happy odds of a formidable public option so intellectually insulting, so emotionally cynical, so exceptionally offensive. Those Dems can count -- they know full well that the Senate count doesn't even add up to a reconcilable 50, let alone 60 -- yet for purely self-interested reasons they proceed with bamboozling voters into benighted expectations; voters who quite obviously are themselves incapable of counting.

It's scandalous. When Congressional progressives start believing that cynically misleading the public -- at any time and for any reason -- is an acceptable political maneuver, then they've sunk to the wretched level of Republicans. And then there is truly no option left to the public.