adonis
Footballguy
An uncommon thing to do here, but after doing more reading, I'll admit you're right on the details about what killed the public option. Lieberman had a big hand in axing the public option.Right...this is what I am refuting and replacing with what happened. Your second paragraph says exactly what I said when it came to the GOP. The reality is, Obama's original proposal had a public option in it. That was axed in the Senate before it even got to the GOP in the House because the Senate deemed the public option a non-starter politically.
So this:
is demonstrably incorrect. It was in his original plan and the Senate told him "no". Ben Nelson (D) specifically as well as Joe Lieberman (technically an "independent")
However, my broader point was that the Obama administration did start out the negotiations using a conservative framework in order to get Republican support. He was criticised roundly in his negotiations for starting out at a position of compromise. We dont' know what a bill that would've been founded on more liberal ideas might or might not have done because it didn't happen, but based on Lieberman's opposition to the public option it might have been in trouble...however, we just don't know if compromises could've been made there to get his vote.
If we go back to my main point you said "THe GOP was exactly none of the equation" and I still maintain that the original central starting point of the ACA was based on a conservative framework in order to try to get support from Republicans. They were unable to append a public option onto that conservative framework, but that still doesn't take away from the fact that the GOP was definitely part of why Obama chose that framework to begin with.