This has always bothered me and I never have really seen any good follow up along the lines of the analysis below. Right now the public option polls good – due to how the question is asked. When asked in a way that more honestly represents the real meaning of “public option”, its popularity tanks. Right now there are plenty of folks in the blogosphere, Senators, and Representatives making overtures to bringing back the “popular” public option, and they often quote some of the numbers from the article. When are conservatives going to get on message and push additional polls or at least message out the information provided in the linked article? I am tired of hearing about how popular the public option is when it is most definitively not popular. I don’t doubt that polling data for the public option and how well it is received is going to be highlighted at the upcoming summit. I hope the Republicans have their wits about them and draw attention to the skewed polling techniques that show how popular a very unpopular public option is.

Let’s take a look at Rasmussen. He has offered a series of really interesting questions on health care. First, he gives a basic version of the question that ABC News/WaPo, CBS News/NY Times, Marist, and CNN asked:

Would you favor or oppose the creation of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option that people could choose instead of a private health insurance plan?

That gets strong approval, as per usual when people hear words like “choose,” “compete,” and “option.”

Then Rasmussen asks this follow up:

Suppose that the creation of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option encouraged companies to drop private health insurance coverage for their workers. Workers would then be covered by the government option. Would you favor or oppose the creation of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option if it encouraged companies to drop private health insurance coverage for their workers?

What happens when this Republican argument is substituted for the Democratic argument? Support for the public option plummets dramatically. Nearly 3/5ths of all respondents voiced opposition to the public option when it was phrased in this way.

So next time you hear a liberal spew out the “pubic option polls well” talking point, give them a dose of something they are not too familiar with – inconvenient facts.

Major Update: The Senator Jim DeMint Healthcare Amendments – Why They Matter. A Strategy To Kill Reconciliation. This is a must read post that outlines a strategy only the grassroots could execute – a strategy that decreases the likelihood the votes exist in the Senate even for Reconciliation.

So this is compromise. From government run socialist healthcare to a government run fascist healthcare. And it looks like a number of Republican Senators are practically wetting their pants over this copout as opposed to opting out altogether and standing up for their constituents.

For these Republicans, the danger of believing this agreement finally closes the door on a painful August with expectations we will all fall in line like mindless robots is these politicians seem to forget how quickly we now pick up on the details. Gone are the days when many Republicans could count on an apathetic electorate. The lesson of August? Ignore us at your peril.

Any Republican that votes for this blatant destruction of personal liberties may as well save themselves the time and start packing their bags now. Complicity by any Republican will exile them to the political wilderness, and don’t be afraid to let them know that. This bipartisan RINOCare compromise takes us from big government to a big government, big business collusion. Republican politicians call it a “public-private partnership” between big insurance and the federal government. But what is the reality? It is a nefarious entity best described as a government maintained insurance cartel. For details, read Obama’s Health-Insurance Cartel (emphasis mine).

For all his talk about choice and competition, what Obama proposes is more of what we already labor under: corporate-state bureaucratic decision-making. The status quo is not the free market. It is a system of government-business collusion that, among other things, welds workers to their employers. Obama’s scheme would simply be more of the same. The reason Big Pharma and Big Insurance favor the scheme is that everyone would be forced to buy their products or coverage for their products, with the taxpayers picking up most of the tab.

Note the words corporate-state bureaucratic decision-making. If you think the Senate Finance Committee rids us of rationing and death panels (that’s right, I used that phrase), then your in for a surprise. Instead of a government bureaucracy making your decisions for you, you know have the monstrous child of the union of government and big insurance. Either way, the decision about your healthcare is taken from you and your doctor and handed off to the uncaring hands of self-serving companies and bloated government.

While I disagree with Obama and Gibbs on pretty much everything and loath Obama’s overt attempt to socialize this country, this is very telling:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs criticized the Senate Finance Committee 24 hours before President Barack Obama is set to address Congress, questioning why lobbyists have a copy of the committee bill before the administration.

Gibbs said it is “not surprising” that K Street lobbyists have the proposal, which does not include the controversial public-option plan, before the president does.

Anyone who thinks this Orwellian piece of legislation trash is good for America is now forewarned (emphasis mine):

Well Ladies and Gentlemen of the grass roots looky here: Now emerges from the shadows the hand holding the smoking gun spotted earlier of the Big-Business/Big-Government bipartisan conspiracy to conscript the entire population into a government-run healthcare system. Today, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) released details of his healthcare plan that would impose fines of up to $3,800 on a family that refuses to purchase health insurance.

Although this plan is being introduced by a top-ranking Democrat, the framework of the program is shaping up to be very similar to the Republican-designed blue print the GOP already foisted on the nation under the Medicare Part D prescription drugs program, which I described some time ago about three fourths of the way through this radio interview.

There is, consequently, good reason for the White House to remain optimistic about achieving a “bipartisan compromise.” The President’s Senate operatives are embracing Republican thinking and going over to the Red Side to entice GOP Senators to join in the healthcare takeover:

“The plan from Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana would make health insurance mandatory, just like auto coverage. . .It would provide tax credits to help cover the cost for people making up to three times the federal poverty level. . .Those who still don’t sign up would face hefty fines, starting at $750 a year for individuals and $1,500 for families.

For those who earn more than three times the poverty level and refuse to purchase insurance, the penalty on individuals would jump to $950 and the penalty on families would jump to $3,800.

Senator Baucus says he is hoping his plan can win bipartisan support. And, why not? Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) is known to be secretly negotiating with the White House to impose just such a mandate. Senator Chuck Grassley already stated publicly that he, and many in his party, support imposing a mandate on individuals to purchase healthcare. To wit: Four other Republicans (Bennett, Alexander, Crapo and Graham) already (co)sponsor a bill (S. 391, Wyden-Bennett) the central organizing principle of which is an individual mandate.

And, as one liberal wag put it, the insurance companies are not the problem holding up healthcare reform, “Since they desperately want an individual mandate passed and will accept anything short of having their CEOs pushed out of an airplane door to get it.” It looks like six Republican Senators are just dying to jump out of an airplane to give it to them.

All that is required now to seal the deal is to put a Potemkin front on the public option and paint the words “Insurance Cooperatives” over the door. Presto magico, a “bipartisan compromise,” a.k.a. RHINOCare…

…The momentum is building toward a negotiated RHINOCare compromise on healthcare reform. If it happens, it will be just the latest in a long string of lurches toward a government takeover of everything engineered by Republicans in the name of freedom, security, privacy and free markets.

It is positively Orwellian.

In a match made in hell, powerful Republicans are brokering a RINOCare deal between the White House and big business to replace an employer mandate with an individual mandate (see here) and pave the way toward cartelization a health insurance market cartel (see here).

So President Obama has jettisoned the public option right on cue. The pivot is being portrayed in the press as an effort to salvage ObamaCare from ferocious opposition to the public option from the right, which is true but it is not the whole explanation of what Obama is doing and why he is doing it.

This move is not occurring in a panic, as some pundits would have people believe. This political pivot has long been contemplated within the White House as part of the Administration’s strategy to devise a healthcare package acceptable to the insurance industry, which in turn the President hopes will provide a “compromise” conservatives can live with. The trick is to do so without so alienating the left wing of his own party that he gets mouse trapped in the middle.

Now the following makes a bit more sense: Tide turns against public option on eve of President Obama’s address. Obama may pay lip service to the public option in his address to Congress tonight, but as to losing sleep over the loss of the public option – don’t count on it. The takeover of your healthcare is right on schedule and the dealing is positively Machiavellian.

There is no need for a massive overhaul of the healthcare industry to address the problems we are facing today. Simple free-market solutions exist which can drive down costs without liberty destroying legislation that favors big government and/or big business and without the budget busting pricetag attached to all these proposals. I live in Texas and the benefits of tort reform are quantifiable and beneficial to both patients and doctors.

Contact your Senator now and demand they hit the reset button and start over with real reform. If you Senator is Republican, demand they either stop or do not enter into any negotiations on any of the existing bills. It’s time to start over, keep big government out of our lives, and kick the special interests to the curb. This is about you and me – not them.

If your Senator is one of the following I recommend getting a few friends to get a few friends to get a few friends to contact them: (Gregg, Grassley, Snowe, Collins, Bennett, Murkowski, Voinovich, Corker, Alexander, Enzi, Graham, McCain, McConnell).

If you think its time to panic, it just might be. Educating the grass roots about this is probably one of the most important tasks at hand right now, and it must be done fast. I humbly hope this post meets with some success in providing the background necessary to fight this tooth-and-nail.

Update: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) looks like he is all over this “compromise” business and is ready to sell us out. Send letters, faxes, emails, and phone the sellout Senator (now there’s a nickname). His contact information is: Phone: 202-224-2541 FAX: 202-224-2499. Tell him no compromise on ObamaCare. It’s time to hit the reset switch.

Update: Right on cue: Reid endorses healthcare co-ops as Speaker Pelosi signals flexibility.

Baucus noted that the policies Obama outlined closely match the proposal Baucus presented to his bipartisan group last weekend, which will be the basis of a bill he will introduce next week and mark up in the committee the following week.

In other news and opinion:

Senate Republican Leader Sticks His Foot In GOP’s Mouth:

In today’s Washington Post (“Senate Finance Committee Chair Holds Out Hope That Bipartisan Accord Can Be Reached”), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stuck his foot in the Republican Party’s mouth:

“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signaled Tuesday his party may retreat from the ‘just say no’ approach [on healthcare reform] that was effective this summer. Doing nothing, he said, is not an option. ‘At this point, there really should be no doubt where the American people stand. The status quo is not acceptable, but neither are any of the proposals we’ve seen from the White House or Democrats in Congress,’ he said. What people want, McConnell said, is a less costly effort with a less ambitious scope. ‘They want reforms, but they want the right reforms,’ he said.”

Is this the sound of professional Republican politicians beginning to cave in on a government takeover of healthcare? Was the Republican Leader signaling their willingness to cut a deal with the “right reforms,” such as an individual mandate and healthcare cooperatives, which Senate Democrats are now promoting and numerous Republican Senators are on record supporting? Or is it the sound of a tactical misstep by the Senate Republican Leader putting his foot too close to the edge and finding his footing collapsing beneath him?

The minute the Senate Republican Leader accepted the President’s patently false premise that “doing nothing is not an option,” he stepped out onto a slippery slope. Unless his colleagues pull himself back off it immediately, he could pull the entire Republican Party down to ruin along with him…

The K Street tax cheat who’s lobbying to save Obamacare

Czar backlash builds: Democrat calls for removal

Blue Dog: Town halls convinced me to oppose public option

ObamaCare Will Result in Lower Future Living Standards

Paul Krugman Vs Sarah Palin On Health Care

Government rejects Card Check as “unreliable”

Video: Democratic disarray

Boustany rebuttal: start with what we ‘agree upon’

Jim DeMint to Obama: Let’s go over ObamaCare line by line

Will the Speech Tonight Plug the Dike?

Behind closed doors: Baucus wooing Grassley and Enzi. Putting lipstick on a pig.

Dr. Lawrence Hunter of the Social Security Institute has a ringside seat of what is really happening in the ObamaCare negotiations and it is not anything like any of us would expect.

Serious pressure is building and the momentum is on our side. However, without the knowledge of what is actually happening behind the scenes, the grave we are digging for ObamaCare could actually become our own graves. Our collective effort could all be for naught if we allow the construction of any scaffolding for a public option. Liberals are very patient about realizing their agenda. They will build upon any infrastructure that allows for a Trojan Horse to a single payer system. And Republicans are often the unwitting contributors of legislation that is not in our best interests. More damage is done in the name of bi-partisanship and those Republicans with a proclivity to reach across the aisle need to be reigned in. We are so close and now is not the time to go wobbly.

The word from Dr. Hunter: Don’t get all excited about Obama dropping the public option. It is a head fake. Republicans should stop all negotiations with the Democrats, kill any ObamaCare bill and start over. And don’t thing that big pharma and the big insurance are our friends in this battle. The real behind the scenes maneuvering is a hodgepodge of nefarious backroom deals. I have talked with Lawrence Hunter and communicated with him via email for about two weeks now. My understanding of the real inner workings of the beltway have increased an order of magnitude and many of my previous beliefs exposed as nothing less than naivety. Prepare to be educated, entertained, and re-invigorated at the same time. Our energy needs to be directed now towards Congress, where the message must be clear – kill this bill. No co-ops, no bill written by big insurance companies or big pharma, no nothing. Hit reset, start over, and create a bill for the American people that keeps the government out of our business, allows for competition in the private sector, stops the creation of large insurance cartels and allows smaller insurance companies to thrive and compete. In short, a bill for the people, not the government, not big pharma, and not big insurance. Time for the lobbyists to go home, for we are the biggest lobby of all and we are awake. Let us be clear on this. Any Republican who wishes to usurp our will and allow ObamaCare to pass with the public option, a Trojan Horse public option, a large influence by big pharma, or big insurance will face political extinction. As all of the current bills fit this description, the sane choice is to stop and start over.

For an eye-opening view of what is really going on read Obama Jettisons Public Option Right on Cue and Phase Change in Healthcare Negotiations. Dr. Hunter’s bio can also be found on this site. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s policy adviser and has a long and distinguished career.

Dr. Hunter described the current landscape to me very well. To paraphrase Dr. Hunter:

There is a fundamental fissure that divides our camp. On one side stand those who believe some healthcare bill will pass this year. On the other side of the divide stand those who believe it is possible to checkmate the Obama Administration and prevent any bill from passing this year. The outcome of the healthcare-reform struggle will be determined by which view governs our strategy and activities from here on out.

This game is ours to lose, and there is nothing President Obama or his congressional Democrats can do on their own to win it if we don’t make a mistake. Any deviation from the strategy to “Kill Bill” is a mistake. To take a sport’s analogy, the fastest way to lose this game is to start thinking about the next game. If we are thinking and talking policy, we are thinking about the next game because there is no way a sufficient amount of good policy can make its way into a bill this year to make it acceptable. Hence “Kill Bill”, period.

We are now entering the End Game, and no matter how brilliant our Opening Game and Middle Game were – and they were brilliant – we will throw it all away if we fail to make the transition in our play. You can’t win at golf if you can’t putt; you can’t win at basketball if you can’t hit free throws; you can’t win at chess if you can’t play the end game; and you can’t win at politics if you can’t be ruthless in playing the political end game. That is why Democrats repeatedly beat us – we play policy when we should be playing politics while they play politics from beginning to end.

All politics and no policy makes a political party corrupt and degenerate but all policy and no politics makes a political party just plain dense. The little ditty about the Democrats being the evil party and the Republicans being the party of dim bulbs didn’t arise out of thin air.

If we assume some bill will pass, we can pretty well bet that prophecy will become self-fulfilling and some bill will pass.

If we have confidence we can stop all comers, we stand a very good chance of succeeding. But we will only stop all comers if we lay policy aside and do whatever is necessary to defeat the bill, which means all of our energy and resources must be concentrated on preventing a single Republican from defecting.

The debate is entering the stage (the Obama counter-offensive stage) in which any continued discussion of policy (what we should do or what we would accept) is counterproductive to defeating a bill. Look, I know that many of us in this struggle are policy wonks and medical professionals with very strong views about what should be done and about how negligent the Republican Party was for not doing them when they were in power.

But politics has a flow and a rhythm to it—it moves in seasonal cycles. As difficult as it may be for we policy wonks and medical professionals to accept, the season for substance and policy has ended and will not return until after the healthcare reform debate is put on the shelf, which means until after we defeat any and all comers during this Congress. If we try to exploit Obama’s weakness now by trying to craft a bill he will accept that we can live with, we not only will strengthen and empower him, we almost certainly will create a monster that will get out of control in very short order.

Continuing to focus on substance (other than to criticize the substance of the Obama/Dem bills) will divide and divert us, and it will allow Republicans such as Olympia Snowe to avoid her responsibility to ensure good policy for the American people by doing whatever is necessary to defeat a bill.

You can see what I mean coming through clearly in this Washington Post article: The Divisions in the White House Over Health-Care Reform

Snowe is scared to be the sole Republican supporting this bill, not to mention the Republican who ensures the passage of this bill. The reprisals within her caucus could be tremendous. If Snowe drops off the bill, using the budget reconciliation process will probably be a necessity.

As long as we continue talking about alternatives and options, we encourage her to continue negotiating whether that is our intent or not. And, rather than fearing Reconciliation, we should relish forcing the Dems into that corner because if they go down that path we can checkmate them.

We must agree among ourselves that our strategy is to “Kill Bill”, any bill, every bill, a big bill, a little bill, kill them all. If we can’t pledge that to each other, we don’t have the right stuff to win.

Also read the following posts from Dr. Hunter:

Trojan Rhino Smuggles In ObamaCare As “Bipartisan Compromise”

Senator Bob Bennett should stop negotiating. This post contains the two Jim Demint Amendments I have written about extensively after hearing about them from Lewis K. Uhler and Dr. Hunter. In a nutshell, these two amendments would make it impossible to pass ObamaCare under reconciliation, something even Robert Byrd is on the record as opposing. One amendment was voted on unanimously and the other by a wide margin of 79-14. Remarkably, Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Kent Conrad, allowed the DeMint 60-vote requirement to be removed from the Budget Resolution in Conference. Also included are links to the amendments and the roll call for the second amendment that passed by 79-14.

Also of interest is this story from The Hill:

GOP readies wave of objections to stall healthcare bill in Senate

Sen. Judd Gregg has hundreds of procedural objections ready for a healthcare plan Democrats want to speed through the Senate.

Gregg (N.H.), the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, told The Hill in a recent interview that Republicans will wage a vicious fight if Democrats try to circumvent Senate rules and use a budget maneuver to pass a trillion-dollar healthcare plan with a simple majority.

Our strategy is now clear and it becomes increasing apparent to me that not only can we stop reconciliation, but ObamaCare itself. Keep up the pressure on Congress, especially your Senators. Let them know you are aware of the Demint amendments and demand the Senate follow its own rules. As Americans, there are all sorts of rules that we must follow. And as Americans we are sick and tired of a privileged group that lives by the motto “Rules for thee, but not for me”. Enough is enough.

In other news and opinion:

Another Snowe Job

White House Floating “Snowe” Trigger

ObamaCare: Public option + trigger = exit strategy?

“I believe Jesus would vote yes for a public option”

Video: Rep. Pete Stark tells interviewer, “Get the f**k out of here or I’ll throw you out the window”

CNN poll: Majority now oppose ObamaCare

Did Rangel pay off Ethics Committee members?

Video: Van Jones and “revolution”

Obama planning Sister Souljah moment over public option

Another Reason Government-Sponsored Health Care Is Destined to Fail

MoveOn.org Thug Bites Off Protester’s Finger At Obamacare Rally!

Yes We Cannibal

The Holdren & Letterman lovefest

Wrong Turns: How Obama’s Health-Care Push Went Astray.

POLITICS: When Does School Start? The President Doesn’t Know

Turbo Tax Tim tucks tail

The NHS “death pathway”. Chilling.

A Truther Czar?… Obama’s Green Czar Van Jones Believes Bush Government was Behind 9-11

This Wouldn’t Be Happening If Obama Were President

Hands off my health care. Teeth off my hands.

Is There Any More Point to Talking About Health Care?

Operation “Hall Pass on That”