I will reply to this one. The problem is that while yes, the republicans have presented bills to committee, they have not promoted those bills, or anything other than saying "no". If you write a long post on a topic in a word processor on your computer, and file it away on your hard disc without telling any one about it, you are not promoting that post. This is very much like what the republicans have done. The only way I could find out what republicans do want for health care reform is to read some overlong bill that is lacking in details. That is not effective presentation.
There's nothing they CAN do.
I see you responded to that one, but the reason for this is in my other post.
To stop the health care reform bill that includes the public option which they and their constituents dislike so much they only have to get a few dems to agree with them.
To push their views and actually promote it and get it past they'd have to get a majority of Democrats to agree with them to both get it to pass and have enough to prevent the likely veto that could occur.
One is a hard task, but relatively achievable.
The other is akin to playing 1 on 5 basketball, near impossible.
Elected representitives are just like the rest of us. They need to sleep and eat. They live in a world where there's only 24 hours in a given day and only 7 days in a given week. They can only spend so much time doing certain things.
If they spent all their time CURRENTLY trying to push bills that had .00001% chance of actually passing instead of focusing on stopping something that currently the overwhelming majority of their voters dislike and don't want then they are severely wasting their time, and severly wasting the time and money of those that voted for them.
They'd be serving their constituents a hair better than if they were just banging their head against a wall if they did that, because it's a completely fruitless endevour.
Now, if this bill dies and something comes up WITHOUT a public option, and in such a way that their constituents could accept some form of compromise on other issues, then that's the time to truly be pushing ahead saying "Lets try this idea, lets try this one". But right now its more important to kill A PUBLIC OPTION than it is to push for Health Care Reform, because its more likely and thus a better use of their time for it to happen that way. That does not mean they're against
Reform, or don't have ideas, or wouldn't compromise, but it means there's a far greater issue for them and their consitutents at play now that makes it not worth wasting time trying to push the impossible.
