Max Baucus' Gang of Six has turned into the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight by blowing enough holes into the health care bill to leave it bleeding on the Senate Finance Committee floor, the OK Corral of the new politics.
The bipartisan bunch has broken apart, with the last Republican, Maine's Olympia Snowe, holstering up over a proposal to tax high-cost medical insurance, which is prevalent in her state.
For his pains in trying to placate Republicans, the Chairman has, at least temporarily, lost his own Doc Holliday, Jay Rockefeller, who calls himself "probably one of his best friends among Democrats," for Baucus' concessions to win the now-gone GOP members of the Gang that killed the public option and scaled back affordability provisions for the poor.
Yet somehow, something will emerge from the Senate Sausage Factory packaged as health care reform and, after more bickering, bartering and butchering in both houses of Congress, leave all sides unsatisfied but allow the White House to claim victory in what the President calls solving eighty percent of the problem.
Wyatt Earp would have turned in his badge and left town.
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You ask for the stars and have to settle for the moon. Even if the moon is dead piece of rock. If Obama accepts the moon, he never wanted the stars in the first place.
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