A New Direction for Health Care Reform?

The health care reform debate may have shifted significantly this week with the Republicans (led by Senate Whip John Kyl) acknowledging that they have no intention of supporting any legislation whatsoever, and the White House responding with indications that they are prepared to consider a Democrats-only approach.  Kevin Drum asks:

did Obama ever expect anything different?  Was his calm, deliberative, bipartisan sales pitch genuine, or did he know it would fail all along?
 
We've been asking this question ever since the primaries — does he really believe he can sweet talk Republicans into cooperating with him? — and we still don't know the answer.  Obama is a guy who plays his cards very close to his chest.  But the next couple of months should give us a clue.  If he really believed it, then he probably doesn't have much of a Plan B and the next stop for this train is Chaosville.  But if it was mostly an act, then his next step is obvious: he'll make a barnstorming public case that he made a good faith effort to work with Republicans but they were just completely intransigent.  He'll attack them mercilessly and do everything he can to whip public opinion into a lather against the obstinate, obstructionist, reactionary GOP.

If that was his plan all along, it wouldn't be a bad one.  He correctly divined a long time ago that the American public was weary of endless partisan fighting and wanted a break, and he rode that insight to victory.  Regardless of his own beliefs, then, it meant he had to start his presidency by demonstrating a genuine effort to work across the aisle, and he had to keep it up long enough to show he was serious.  Only if it plainly failed would he be able to turn the screws and start fighting on pure partisan lines.

Will it work?  Stay tuned.