Healthcare truce likely to be short

Both sides in the bitter healthcare debate say their truce over the controversial law is only temporary.

Republicans say they will soon renew their efforts to repeal
the law, while supporters say their timeout from publicly arguing against
repeal will run out as soon as the House brings its bill back to the floor.

“We are just taking some more time,” Rep. Cathy McMorris
Rodgers (R-Wash.) said on “Fox News Sunday.” “The repeal of healthcare is a top
priority for the new majority in Congress.”

The short truce in the rhetorical war comes as Rep. Gabrielle
Giffords (D-Ariz.) fights for her life after being shot in the head during a
community event. Republicans postponed a healthcare repeal vote in the wake of
the tragedy that left six people dead.

Both sides say the vote on repealing the healthcare law is
inevitable. And even the rhetorical truce seems unlikely to hold for long.

Liberals, for example, have expressed support for an
editorial in The Huffington Post by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) calling on
Republicans to change the name of the repeal effort, titled the “Repeal the
Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.”

Pingree took issue with the word “killing” in the bill.
While she said she was not suggesting it was connected to the Arizona
shootings, she said the word was unnecessary. “I don’t think the word is in
there by accident — my Republican friends know as well as anyone the power of words to send a message. But in this
environment and at this moment in our nation’s history, it’s not the message we
should be sending”

Liberals also have seized on the suspected shooter’s
rambling political views to criticize Republicans’ heated rhetoric during the
healthcare reform debate: Claims of “death panels” and a “government takeover
of healthcare,” for example, have been identified as a “lie of the year”
by PolitiFact.

Conservatives immediately shot back, with Bill Kristol
of the conservative Weekly Standard calling the particularly intense criticism
of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) a “disgrace” akin to “McCarthyism”

“The attempt to exploit this tragedy,” Kristol said Monday
on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” “is distasteful.”

Advocates have postponed dozens of events scheduled to
criticize any repeal of healthcare.

“The events, the calls, the online mobilization — all of our
organizing is postponed but certainly not canceled,” said Health Care for
America Now Executive Director Ethan Rome. “What we do is related to the
schedule of the Congress as well as our own sense of when it’s appropriate to
engage in activity.”

The group has temporarily halted about 55 events.

Likewise, Organizing for America, an outgrowth of President
Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, has put on hold 71 press conferences that
were scheduled to take place this week outside of Republican lawmakers’
district offices. The political organization had planned to host phone banks
and showcase local people who had benefited from the law since it was
enacted in March.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking
member on the Energy and Commerce panel, canceled a news conference Monday
morning to tout the law’s benefits ahead of the repeal vote, which was
originally scheduled for Wednesday. Waxman is among the liberal lawmakers who
have touted the repeal debate as a chance for Democrats to build popular
support for the law by showcasing its consumer protections.

“I think [the repeal debate] will be a great opportunity for
us to make the case to people about how beneficial this law will be to
everybody,” Waxman told The Hill last year.

Rome said reform advocates’ preference would be for
Republicans to accept that healthcare reform is now the law of the land.
Barring that, though, reform advocates vow to press ahead with their aggressive
defense of the law.

“What does it mean to have a healthcare repeal debate?
There’s no question that it gives supporters the opportunity to talk about the
incredibly popular benefits and consumer protections that are in this law,”
Rome told The Hill.

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows Americans split
on the issue: Twenty-six percent called for complete repeal, 25 percent wanted partial
repeal, 21 percent said to leave the law as it is and 20 percent preferred that it
be expanded.