These polls, released on the eve of the Bipartisan Staring Contest, show an across-the-board rejection of the Democrats’ idea of health care “reform.”

Rasmussen: 41/56
Newsweek: 40/49
Public Policy Polling: 39/50
Pew: 38/50
Quinnipiac: 35/54
Ipsos/McClatchy: 37/51
NBC/WSJ: 31/46
CNN: 38/58
NPR: 39/55

Today’s polling compendium from Real Clear Politics:

(Click image for link)

From CNN:

Fifty-two percent of Independents want Congress to start work on a new bill, with 27 percent saying lawmakers should stop all work, and 18 percent saying that the current legislation should be passed into law.

President Obama wants to use this bipartisan clusterfark as a way to paint Republicans as the “party of no.” Looking at the polling, the American people are the party of no and the Democrats are the party of “we don’t flipping care.” The President and the Democrats in congress wasted their Senate and House majorities by issuing forth a wildly unpopular (which include unConstitutional mandates and the abuse of the Commerce Clause, plus a provision for abortion funding) and poorly-written 2,000+ page bill that they couldn’t pass – even with congressional majorities. Nancy Pelosi did all she could in the House to block Republican involvement from barring their amending of legislation to shooting down their suggestions.

Instead, Democrats have gone with resurrected Clinton-care, by way of price controls and rationing and secret insurance deals.

But while the Democrats are calling these companies evil for wanting to prevent the government takeover of health care, Democrats are working closely with these very same companies to support President Obama’s health care plan. In fact, in exchange for favorable treatment in the health care plan, these companies are financing a massive ad campaign to support it.

[…]

Similarly, at a press conference on July 22, Mr. Obama warned: “you know, there had been reports just over the last couple of days of insurance companies making record profits. Right now, at the time when everybody’s getting hammered, they’re making record profits and premiums are going up.”  With attacks such as this, who would have guessed that these greedy insurance companies are the same ones that Democrats are proposing get paid to administer the new government health care system and that the large insurance companies support this?

According to FOX News, the dreaded pharmaceutical companies are apparently ready to spend at least $150 million, and possibly as much as $200 million, to push the health care changes President Obama wants. Private insurance companies, who launched the famous Harry and Louise ads that were deemed so important in defeating the Clinton takeover of the health care industry in the 1990s, have now launched similar ads with the opposite message supporting President Obama.

That last is interesting to note. Those Harry and Louise ads, which ran during the promotion of Hillary-care, were in part, financed by insurance companies. It was the dirty little secret of the Clinton administration: go after the insurance companies while secretly making backroom deals. Atena, Cigna, Met Life, and others were the big companies involved via the Jackson Hole Group that worked with the Clintons in order to draft their managed care plan and advertise why their particular brand of reform was needed. Here is the trick again, surfacing in this era of “hope and change.”

More on Harry and Louise:

In July 2009, the couple appeared in a new television advertisement in support of the health-care plan promoted by President Barack Obama. The ad was sponsored by a pharmaceutical industry trade group and Families USA.

Yes, the couple wringing their hands over their health care choices, ads used by the Clintons; similar ads created using the same populist message and used by Obama. Some things never change. We’ve already seen the President fold and cut backroom deals with Big Pharma.

Despite all of this, Republicans have hankered for a meeting to discuss real reform since May. They’ve had the Patients Choice Act and have posted alternatives last spring. The GOP alternative is even scored by the CBO, without the aid of fuzzy math. The Democrats insist upon using the bill rotting in congress since summer as the jumping off point for discussion.

How is insisting that an unpopular, NON-bipartisan bill, anti-bicameral as having been crafted by one singular party in any way a good start to a summit advertised as “bipartisan?” That’s rhetorical. Lovers of intellectual honesty know the answer is that it’s not.