You’re just not that into his health care bill? Too bad. He won’t be ignored.

Obama is hoping that by rebranding and reworking the old, rejected versions of the House and Senate bill into an even scarier narrative coupled with a televised meeting, the pressure will be so intense that he can kidnap the handful of Republican votes he needs to catapult this monstrosity over the finish line.

To get our attention, Democrats attempted legislative suicide. After laying low, they're back again, and like any prey dealing with a psycho, Republicans are nervous.

They understand that this is a carefully calculated public relations gimmick designed to force their hand. They know that if they don’t show up, the images of empty chairs across the table from their caucus will be used, repeatedly, to paint them as unwilling to govern and to target them in campaign ads as obstructionists. Forget alerting the wife, the White House is going to out your bad behavior on C-SPAN. In other words: this is blackmail, Beltway style.

Like any concerned observer frightened for my friend’s life, as well as my own, I urged Republicans to set some terms and not accept the invitation to the president’s gathering unless he agreed to start over. Apparently, Mr. Obama was in favor of a second chance for the relationship and demonstrated his willingness by crafting a more expensive and politically explosive version of the first health care bill -- just on his own terms (so much for bipartisanship).

Attention all elected officials: at some point, you need to dig in your heels and do the right thing. For too long the GOP has been concerned with staging and games. On Thursday, they finally have a chance to be principled, but because of the looming land mine, they must acquiesce.

In the days and hours that surround the meeting, the GOP must sing off the same song sheet and often. They must repeat that this summit is, by design, one big trick, and that they have crafted health care plans of their own that have been disregarded.

In the meeting, the right must stick to script, backs facing the wall. Do no harm. No flipping of chairs or sudden outbursts of uncontrollable anger. Let Obama boil the bunnies.

For rank and file Democrats, Thursday’s dance is much more delicate. Obama is winking and nodding his way through the process, while he’s triangulating and strangling his own party.

You see, the real drama is set to occur after Thursday.

News outlets are reporting that Democrats plan to jam the Senate bill thru the House, then pass the Obama amendments as part of a smaller bill, using reconciliation, with changes to the Senate bill. This would prevent the need to go back to the Senate again with all the legislative provisions that could be out of order. It is still questionable whether some legislative provisions in the new Obama bill will be allowed in the Senate. The new price control commission, for example, may not make the cut. But the final, most climactic scene will be the House.

Will they vote for the big Reid bill -- as is? Will they accept the Senate abortion language, or no public option, for example?

Grab the popcorn. This will be great theater. If I were a House Democrat, I'd be petrified.

With each passing week that the president ignores jobs, choosing to focus on his obsession and an unprecedented legislative trick to stalk the public into a submitting to a relationship they don’t want, the more he looks like a lunatic who has escaped the asylum, just waiting to surprise you outside your window, in the rain on your fire escape until you relent.

What has become evident to everyone except the Democratic leadership is that the American majority has no interest in a relationship so dysfunctional, so unstable, so completely unhealthy.

Obama has stumbled many times trying to get his way. Act Two of heath care reform might be his biggest mistake on the issue yet. In an effort to hit a button to reset the process, he might have hit the one that just blew it up. Like any good horror film, the element that’s most despised just won’t die. Let’s hope we can finish health care off before anyone gets hurt.

It's time for President Obama to clean house. His overly ambitious, but largely tone-deaf, team of advisers has ruined his policies and his party. New reports show Obama in real danger when it comes to the public's belief that he should be reelected. And Democrats still manage to trail Republicans in almost every generic poll. Candidates up for reelection on the left are running scared, and the public is out for blood after a year of being force-fed bad policy.

Since Obama won't realistically step down himself, he must make some big changes if he hopes to reverse course. With all this talk about saving and creating jobs, here are positions that aren't worth rescuing:

His terror team - for propagating the pre-9/11 law enforcement mentality.

Top counterterrorism aide John Brennan - for insisting there was "no smoking gun" after the Christmas Day incident despite the captured Kenyan's smoking underpants. Guys like Brennan think it's acceptable to lawyer up a radical in the hopes of cutting a deal. His statement that criticizing the White House only emboldens Al Qaeda was off base, and his belief that the 20% recidivism rate for terrorists released from Gitmo isn't "that bad" was from another galaxy. Unserious attitudes like his can get Americans killed.

Attorney General Eric Holder - for politicizing our national intelligence and compromising our safety. The chief law enforcement officer takes ownership of a string of bad decisions, from choosing to try alleged 9/11 plotters in a New York City federal court to Mirandizing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. In addition, he won't back off his move to prosecute former CIA officials, declassifying sensitive information from intelligence to identities and discouraging our men and women on the front lines from doing their job.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano - for insisting the system worked when an Islamic lunatic almost murdered 300 people with an explosive-laced diaper. Napolitano has yet to clarify whether she was, or was not, briefed on the attack in the days that followed (she's offered two conflicting accounts) and refused to cooperate with Congress in its investigation of the incident. Her position is too important to leave to an amateur.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner - the guy shouldn't have made it past the part where we found out he didn't understand how to pay his taxes. He's made banks deemed "too big to fail" even bigger, though they're not lending as handily as they should, and kept the dying patient that is our economy on life support, including smaller banks. His failure to disclose where TARP bailout money went is reason enough to show him the door.

Break out the bipartisanship. President Obama is ready for another summit. This time he’s invited Republicans to the table later this month to discuss potential compromises on health care reform amid widespread complaints that efforts so far by him, and his Democratic allies in Congress, have been too one sided and secretive.

But Republicans must proceed with caution. This is a trap.

Obama needs to publicly appear more pragmatic and less partisan. And, after Scott Brown’s upset win in Massachusetts last month, he also needs some Republicans to help him get his proposal passed. By letting the bill totally fail, he doesn’t get that glossy narrative in the history books that he so desperately wants. If he can persuade a few moderates in the GOP to reconsider their opposition by co-opting a Republican idea or two, Obamacare becomes law and he can tout bipartisanship. Then, when the massive tax increases hit and problems ensue, he can shift the blame to his enemies. If it sounds shady, it is.

The setting of another televised meeting also benefits Obama more than it helps Republicans. It’s called calculated political window-dressing, and Team Obama has a black belt in the sport.

The President knows he’s the better orator and will make Republicans look like a bunch of stone-walling, puerile jerks in the process – much like he did two weeks ago when he visited House Republicans at their Baltimore retreat. There, he lambasted them for saying no to his policies and chastised them for not cooperating – all in front of the TV cameras, even though Republicans had already put forth ideas and were ignored all along.

So why not call a do-over? A majority of Americans want Congress to hit the reset button. According to a Fox News/ Opinion Dynamics poll conducted February 2-3, 2010, 47% of respondents say that the next step in health care reform should be starting over, something Democrats are unwilling to do.

It would be one thing if Republicans actually wanted to reform health care above all other issues. It would be another if the American people actually *wanted* health care reform, but they don’t -- and they certainly aren’t buying the alarmist language being peddled by the left. In fact, they never have.

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With the exit of Oprah Winfrey now slated for 2011, is Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, first female GOP vice presidential candidate, mother, author, liberal hallucinogen and now television commentator, poised to fill the void left by the Queen of Talk?

You betcha.

Though many believe she's set her sights on the White House in 2012, Palin should get this through her head now: She would be far more influential as a talk show host than she would be as a presidential candidate, and she should start planning her career trajectory accordingly.

I say this not because Palin is incapable of being an impactful politician, but because she has been profoundly hindered by the left's hateful and perplexing obsession with demeaning and destroying her at all costs.

That sadly renders her a distraction to both parties - one who'd be better off stepping out of the political limelight (at least for now) and into the TV spotlight.

If you think the deep division and party gridlock is bad with President Obama, the alleged uniter, at the helm, picture what a Palin candidacy - and, if that works out, a Palin presidency - would bring. She could barely govern in Alaska with the onslaught of allegations and baseless lawsuits thrown at her daily. Life in the lower 48 would be increasingly more challenging.

Trying to become the next Oprah, on the other hand? For an ambitious and competitive spirit like Palin, that's a mammoth challenge actually worth pursuing. And once you get past the surface differences, the similarities between the two women are pretty striking.

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