Ezra Klein recently documented six more contemporary Republican ideas incorporated into the current Democratic bills: an allowance for interstate compacts; the exchanges themselves, which pool risks for individuals and small businesses; a "waiver for state innovation" that allows states to structure their own plans; encouragement of state innovation on malpractice reform; the excise tax, which is a start on reigning in the employer tax deduction for health care; and the absence of a public option.
All this conceptual bipartisanship has of course won the Democrats zero votes (okay, one House vote, to be retracted in the next round) from the present-day extremists who have taken over the Republican party. Yet the Democrats are still singing the same tune -- whether to win over the more conservative members of their own party,who largely replaced moderate Republicans, or to demonstrate their moderation to the country at large -- or both, as a centrist cast to the bill makes it easier for blue dog Democrats to justify a yea vote to their relatively conservative constituencies.
Here's Nancy Pelosi, contradicting herself in two sentences, defining the new bipartisanship in the second:
“Bipartisanship is a two-way street,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declares in an interview airing Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
“But let me say this,” Pelosi continues, “The bill can be bipartisan, even though the votes might not be bipartisan, because they [Republicans] have made their imprint on this.”
