.In rhetorical and political flavor, Keith Olbermann and David Brooks are unlike things. MSNBC's pinstriped prince of prime-time delivers his shtick in booming tones of liberal outrage, while the New York Times's token conservative delivers a weekly supply of mild, milquetoast conservatism.
But when it comes to killing the Senate bill, the two are on the same page. Conservative Brooks gives his hypothetical 'no vote' in his Friday column, though with a measure of reluctance:
So what's my verdict? I have to confess, I flip-flop week to week and day to day. It's a guess. Does this put us on a path toward the real reform, or does it head us down a valley in which real reform will be less likely?
But in the end, he couldn't bring himself to supporting it:
If I were a senator forced to vote today, I'd vote no. If you pass a health care bill without systemic incentives reform, you set up a political vortex in which the few good parts of the bill will get stripped out and the expensive and wasteful parts will be entrenched.
Olbermann, on the other hand, doesn't hem and haw at all:
The American Insurance Cartel is the Death Panel, and this Senate bill does nothing to destroy it. Nor even to satiate it. It merely decrees that our underprivileged, our sick, our elderly, our middle class, can be fed into it, as human sacrifices to the great maw of corporate voraciousness, at a profit per victim of 10 cents on the dollar, instead of the current 20.