Winners and losers of Obama’s Health Care Summit

Chris Chillizza at the Washington Post picks the Winners and Losers of  the Health Care Summit (a.k.a Obama’s Dog and Pony Show on health care).  I have a slightly different take.  Here is what I saw.

Winners:

Obama: If you are a person who does not follow politics closely and you tuned in to the summit today, you would have found Obama acting like a referee trying to bring the two ideologically opposed parties together. He came off as fair and above the fray (most of the time, John McCain would disagree).  You could almost forget that it is HIS nasty bill that was actually the starting point for today’s event.

Republicans:  The guys brought their A-Game. They did not come off as stodgy old obstructionist. They did not come off as uncaring and they did not come off as lacking ideas. Since the goal of this sham summit was to turn Republicans into scapegoats, then I would have to say the summit failed. It will be hard to paint the Republicans as the Party of No on this one.

Paul Ryan:  This guy stole the show. Ryan was loaded with facts and figures and used them with a very reasonable tone to drive home his points. I pity any Democrat who ever has to take this guy on in a debate.

Loosers

Democrats: Obama did nothing for his party with this summit. While Obama stayed above the fray, it was the Democrats who had to do all the dirty work. Harry Reid’s flat out lie about him not mentioning reconciliation has all the makings for a killer YouTube video. Nancy was as shrill as ever. Since Democrats have had the megaphone on this issue for over a year, all their talking points sounded stale compared to the Republicans who finally got to say their peace.

The American People:  Nothing was solved here. Worse yet any good ideas mentioned will not be taken into consideration, because the fix is already in.

What was your take?  Who are your winners and losers?

Via: Memeorandum

Via: The Fix