Understatement of the year on Obama’s proposed health care summit:

[I]t remains unclear whether a single discussion can begin to bridge the political and substantive policy divide with Republicans, who view their united front against the Democratic bills as a key to their political recovery.

I understand the supposed rationale for the summit is to “engage Congressional Republicans in policy negotiations, share the burden of governing and put more scrutiny on Republican initiatives,” as the Times puts it, but let’s be clear — the meeting is an obviously phony PR stunt. The Democrats are locked into the Senate bill plus whatever changes they have to make in a separate reconciliation bill to appease House Democrats. On background, an administration official said “This is not starting over… We are coming with our plan [a merged version of the House and Senate bills].” On the GOP side, the invited Republicans are surely going to use the meeting to promote their own health care agenda, not to try to improve a bill they nearly unanimously oppose. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even said “we know there are a number of issues with bipartisan support that we can start with when the 2,700-page bill is put on the shelf.”

In short, Obama is raising expectations for genuine bipartisanship, but it’s not going to happen — the odds of important policy changes coming out of the meeting are virtually nil. If House Democrats then go ahead and pass the Senate bill plus a reconciliation package on a party-line vote, the press will again surely note the contrast between Obama’s rhetoric and the realities of legislating in a highly partisan Congress. Is this stunt really worth a delay of more than two weeks?

Update 2/8 9:15 PM: Greg Sargent reports that House Minority Whip Eric Cantor is just as dismissive of the exercise as McConnell:

[U]nless the President and Speaker Pelosi are willing to scrap their government take over and hit the reset button, there’s not much to talk about.

Republicans believe the status quo is unacceptable, but so is any health reform package that spends money we don’t have or raises taxes on small businesses and working families in a recession.