I never said they should support THIS bill. I don’t think they should ultimately support any bill, but to stubbornly say that, they’ll look like children, and that would change the subject.
I agree with what you've been saying throughout this thread- from a public relations standpoint, it's bad politics to look like a pack of braying, naysaying obstructionists. Republicans do indeed need to appear to be offering the dems some smart, saner reforms which would actually fix the problems rather than reward the federal government for its disastrous mishandling of medicare & medicaid by handing it everything else it hasn't yet screwed up. Absolutely! In fact pubbies have BEEN doing that, though they don't get any traction with the state run media which is pushing Obama's bill.
The problem is here we're not talking about generic republicans adapting a 'reasonable', flexible attitude for the sake of public relations in this battle.
We're talking about John Sidney McCain, a card-carrying member of his very own party of one who's never met a problem he didn't think a massive government program designed by his BFFs across the aisle wouldn't fix. What he's saying here is NOT just for the benefit of enhacing Rebublicans' political negotiating position. Not on your life!
Nope, this man is going to get his name on the 2009 McCain-Kennedy-Feingold-Lieberman Health Act if it kills him, by golly, and he doesn't care if he has to screw Republicans, the elderly or his country to get his name on it or any other bill for that matter, no matter how truly rotten it is.
In fact, just so long as there's even a little bit of space on the top of the page where he can squeeze in his name in there somewhere, McCain is good to go as one of its sponsors & he doesn't care one whit what's actually in it!
Now, if some other Republican had said he was considering the bill without x,y or z component, we could probably trust him that he's just playing to the press for the sake of appearing deliberative & wasn't really going to sign his name to a dem turkey like Obamacare & help the dems share the blame with the repubs for the disastrous consequences which will likely ensue from their legislative malfeasance.
It's just that, given McCain's ignominious history of saddling the citizens with some of the worst, most boneheaded 'compromise' legislation ever crafted in the history of this Republic (see: McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman etc etc et al ad nauseum), we KNOW only too well we can't expect that this man will do what's right for the American people if it means he must forego getting any bill-naming 'glory'. That's just who this man is, unfortunately. That's the sum total of his ideology (emphasis on the id.)
IOW, I don't think any of us here would be averse at all to another Republican making politically smart conciliatory-sounding noises about trying to find common ground with POTUS & the dem majority for the good of the nation yadayada as you correctly suggested is wise, it's just John McCain in particular who makes us scream 'BOHICA!' when he even starts talking this way about 'compromise'.
We've all just seen this movie too many times before, unfortunately.