In a move that may be shrewd, or may reveal that he is still struggling with the learning curve, President Obama has called for a health care “summit.” Lawmakers of both parties are supposed to get together on February 25 to discuss health care reform in a publicly televised forum. Leading Republicans are saying they won’t attend unless the Dems agree to scrap the work they’ve done already and start over. The White House response seems to say that won’t happen, but it’s not clear.

Steve Benen: “Republicans would be more willing to talk about health care reform if the president agrees in advance to give Republicans the opportunity to kill health care reform.” Yeah, pretty much.

Benen continues,

In the larger context, it’s a reminder that the summit invitation puts Republicans in an awkward spot. If they participate, they’ll very likely lose the policy debate. If they reject the invitation, they’ll look petty and small (even more so than usual), giving Dems ammunition to further characterize the GOP as knee-jerk partisans, unwilling to even have an open and bipartisan conversation.

That’s probably the real purpose of the summit — flush the Party of No out into the open. It could backfire, however.

An editorial at The Economist does a great job of summarizing Republican “ideas” about health care reform. After explaining why Republican ideas are ridiculous, the editorial continues –

But the fact that Republicans’ ideas do not realistically address America’s health-insurance crisis doesn’t mean they would not be able to present them effectively in a big public forum. Mr Ryan, for example, can give an extremely convincing pitch, focusing on market competition and bending down the curve on health-care inflation. Other Republicans could pretend that we can solve our health-insurance problems by limiting malpractice awards. Democrats can explain that Mr Ryan’s plan would hugely increase the number of uninsured and that malpractice reform is insignificant, but in an open, free-form debate, the arguments would swirl indefinitely in a “he-said/she-said” zone of confusion. Democrats may ignore non-feasible Republican ideas, while Republicans continue to claim that their solutions were never tried. This will only exacerbate the mess.

In other words, just the same nonsense we’ve been having, only televised.