It appears that the topic of the day is whether John Boehner should agree to meet the President in the White House for a televised conference on the Health Care Initiative on February 25. 

Among the questions Representative Boehner must answer are what would the advantages be to such a meeting at this time?  What might they gain?

For more than a year, despite the rhetoric that came from the White House, the majority leader in the Senate and the Speaker, republicans were totally shut out of every meeting to discuss healthcare.  For more than a year these meetings were held in private with no concern for the campaign promises made by Obama in 2008 that meetings would be conducted on C-Span.  Transparency was promised and transparency was denied.  Suddenly with the turn of one Senate seat democrats have lost their filibuster busting majority and now Obama must deal with republicans.  As his first effort to do so he has called for the delayed meeting on his home court with an unknown list of additional participants.  Is he after political video and sound bites? 

·        Will the president prior to this meeting agree to begin with a blank sheet of paper and throw away the work of 2009 that nobody wants?

·        Who will also be in attendance at the meeting? 

·        What will be the format of the meeting?

·        Will the president be prepared to discuss and eliminate all special deals to secure future votes?

Before Boehner agrees to this meeting I believe he must illicit a public agreement from the president to cast away the 2700 pages already written and agree to provide equal time to the republican representatives to speak?  My biggest concern is that he intends to bring republicans to the White House to “speak to them” and provide video tape to spin as republican recalcitrance and obstructionism at play when Obama finally made the magnanimous offer to allow them to participate.  This will be spun as why they were denied access in 2009, because they have nothing to offer.  The fact that they have ideas that were summarily discarded by the president and the democrats in Congress will be lost on our elite media and all that will be left will be the impression demonstrated by editing these tapes of a “just say no” republican leadership more intent on obstructing than participating in the legislative process.

My advice is to continue to just say no and wear that as a badge of honor through November.  Somebody must say no to the policies and tactics used by this administration in just the same way we tell kids to simply say no to drugs and we advise young girls to say no to young paramours seeking to rob them of their virginity.  Compromise on these issues is of no virtue.