Laura Ingraham blasts Obama for pro-choice position.

Which would be more surprising?

A) Any of the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination coming out in favor of taxing millionaires?

B) President Obama supporting a woman’s right to choose?

If you guessed “B,” stop reading this blog and go back to bed.  Maybe Laura should go back to sleep, too.

In a recent blog post, she took Obama to task for supporting a position that he has had all of his political life: a woman’s right to choose. Uncovering Obama’s position on abortion took a lot of sly detective work on her part.

The “revelation” in her post is that Obama and many of his supporters believe that there are environmental and economic reasons to be pro-choice. Why is that any more unsavory than hearing the far-right claim that taxing the rich is “unfair” economically?

The “most listened-to woman political radio show host(ess)” evidently needed some filler for her blog. We’re happy to do our part and share her hard work with our more politically moderate audience.

Laura’s most recent book is Of Thee I Zing: America’s Cultural Decline from Muffin Tops to Body Shots

Backtracking on backtracking.

Richard Pryor had this great bit in which he asked a woman who saw him cheating with another woman, “Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”

The White House is basically asking us the same question — only it’s not so funny.

Over the weekend President Obama, Secretary Sebelius, White House spokesman Gibbs went to great pains to tell us that a public option was not an essential ingredient in health care reform. Indeed, the president said that we were “fixated” on the public option.

Yesterday and today we are being told that the president has not changed positions. Really? As the Washington Post reminded us today,

President Obama had pushed a nonprofit, government-sponsored insurance plan as an alternative to existing insurance companies, saying that a public program would compete with the industry and help reduce costs.

But this is what Gibbs had to say about the “apparent” shift in the president’s priorities:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. . .said Obama has not shifted his position, suggesting that the president’s support for a public option had never been absolute. “The goals are choice and competition. His preference is a public option. If there are other ideas, he’s happy to look at them,” Gibbs said. White House officials repeatedly denied that there was any new positioning on the provision, accusing the media of fabricating developments.

Basically, this is the Pryor technique at work in the White House. Our lying eyes and ears are not to be believed. What we saw and heard over the weekend were mere apparitions.

Anyone doing research on this issue can find dozens of occasions when President Obama proclaimed universal coverage as a core principle of health care reform. And, of course, it is and always has been. That is what this fight is about. There are 47 million people in this country without health insurance and not getting the medical attention they need. We are no more fixated on universal coverage than anti-war advocates are fixated on peace. Universal coverage is the centerpiece of reform. Once upon a time, the president was adamant that it was. Now that the GOP and neo-Dems are pushing their own agenda, he is backing away from that commitment.

We can only hope that eventually the president and his staff start believing their own eyes and ears and take note of the millions of people – including leaders in his own party – who are counting on him to bring us real change, not doublespeak and backtracking.

Obama could use Truman’s backbone.

With universal health insurance now in tatters, withdrawn today as a serious component of President Obama’s prescription for health care reform, it is fair to say that Obama reached his Waterloo and – as the Far Right predicted — beat a hasty, shameful retreat.

I don’t know of a president who has sold out his core constituencies so quickly — almost offhandedly. In eight short months, Obama as piled up the disappointments, all of them important  issues to the people who elected him.

Today it was universal health care. Before that it was foot-dragging on closing Guantanamo,  a refusal to investigate Bush-era rights violations, dumping legislation to help homeowners renegotiate their loans, getting us deeper into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, not to mention his lackluster support for gay rights and the legalization of marijuana.

The question arises: what does this president stand for?

The answer is: everything. He stands and takes whatever punches the GOP and the Far Right throw at him. Instead of fighting back, he caves. And caves. And caves.

Universal health care, now known as the public option, has been a core principle of health care reform going back to the days of Harry Truman. We did not elect Obama to implement insurance reform, although that must necessarily be a part of health care reform. What we care about is providing health insurance to the 47 million Americans who don’t have any. Obama is now saying that left and right are “fixated” on the public option. We are no more fixated on universal coverage than anti-war advocates are fixated on peace.

As Alan Colmes put it, “When are Democrats going to stop letting Republicans railroad them?” Of course, the shame of it all is that the main Democrat getting railroaded is Barack Obama.

Although some argue that caving in to Republicans is in the Democrats’ DNA, Harry “Give ‘Em Hell” Truman was one Democrat who had a backbone and stood up for what he believed in.

Case in point: Just after World War Two the U.S. was threatened with a number of serious national strikes by steel workers, coal miners, and others.  As a Democrat, Truman’s sympathies were certainly with the unions, but he could not sit back and let them bring the country to a standstill no matter how powerful or influential they were.

In 1946 the last straw for Truman was a threatened strike by railroad workers. Truman and the White House worked hard to get the two sides to agree to a contract, but to no avail. Truman then went before Congress to say that any railroad worker who went on strike would be drafted into the Army. While many doubted that such an act would actually be constitutional, Truman was ready to issue such orders.

Simply by holding firm, using his backbone instead of caving into the unions, the strike was averted. In fact, the unions gave in just as Truman was delivering his speech to Congress.

Many point to Franklin Roosevelt as a model for Obama to follow. A better one, I think, is Truman. If Obama could stick up for his convictions and principles with the same tenacity and courage as Truman, the public option — covering 47 million uninsured Americans — would still be in play.

Of course, all this assumes that Obama truly has convictions and principles. Today’s capitulation to conservatives makes me wonder.