GOP Near Defeat on Health Care Reform Bill
Sunday, December 20, 2009 at 9:57AM 
It has been, as Saddam Hussein may have put it, the mother of of all battles.
The Republican Party and its supporters and patrons (polite for lobbyist writing checks) are on the verge of a major defeat.
The Democrats have tortured a bill into being that seems headed for approval.
And while this is the ultimate bill by committee, with its myriad imperfections and quirks, it will represent a major leap forward for health care in America.
Meanwhile, if the bill is indeed approved, the GOP will wake up with yet another major defeat - and the faint hope that they've wounded President Obama so deeply that he will be incapacitated as he tries to implement the rest of his agenda.
Here's senior Republican Senator John McCain speaking on FoxNews:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) concedes that Republican senators won’t be able to stop Democratic health care reform legislation from passing the Senate before Christmas.
“We will fight until the last vote,” McCain told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace. “We owe that to our constituents, because we must do everything – we must look back and say we did everything to prevent this terrible mistake from taking place.”
Democrats recently reached a deal with hold out members of their own caucus to cobble together the 60 votes necessary to pass the bill - and McCain, in response to a Wallace question, said there’s “probably not” anything the GOP can do to block the bill. “But what we can do is continue winning the battle of American public opinion.”
And Sen. Lindsey Graham rails against the Democrats:
2010 elections, barack obama, conservatives, democrats, gop, health care, politics, republicans 
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Reader Comments (1)
"The Republican Party and its supporters and patrons (polite for lobbyist writing checks) are on the verge of a major defeat."
Since when lobbyists write checks for Republicans only.
Obama has been wounded deeply. His popularity dive is the steepest in history for a president in his first year. Even if his healthcare bill passes, it is far from his atrocious single payer goal. We may say it was a split. Even the poll of leftist, government controlled "news" organization CNN shows that the public is 61 % opposed to 36 percent in favor of the bill. To me, that is a major defeat. Let's wait until November of 2010 when we will confirm that Obama is deeply wounded, even mortally wounded. I may feel a bit gulty, but I get schadenfreude.
Americans have lost their guts lately, but theywill find them as soon as they realize what a lousy system socialism is.