I was in and out of the health-care summit today, listening to it alternately on the radio and tuning in for a bit on television.

The first thing that occurred to me was, "Who the hell scheduled this thing for a Thursday afternoon during the Olympics?" Obama's biggest media booster was focusing intently on cross country skiing and curling, leaving the field wide open for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News and other less-than-sympathetic voices to create the media narrative.

Even on CNN, the President was damned with faint praise, and Republicans--speaking for less than a third of the session, used the opportunity to dispel the hoary myth that they 'have no ideas'. It was remarkable to hear Democrat after Democrat rely on heart-wrenching (OK, not so heart-wrenching, really) anecdotes about Americans suffering at the hands of a dysfunctional and heartless health-care system. Republicans on the other hand dealt with the issue in a substantive, policy-oriented way.

The Corner probably summarized with the narrative will be tomorrow:

Let me try something out on you: This health-care summit was a bad idea for the Democrats for this reason: They have long benefited from a perception — a perception greatly abetted by the media: The Republicans don’t care about health care, they don’t know about health care, they are the Party of No. All the ideas and caring are on the Democratic side.

It is not so, and it has never been so. And now everybody knows it.

Lest you think I'm spinning, consider Slate's perspective:

If the White House health care summit was political theater, here's a 30-second review: President Obama won. So did congressional Republicans. Democrats in Congress need another act.

The dug-in partisans will of course, not care about this, but when this becomes the media's first-take on history, the political fall-out is inevitable. Obama effectively killed his health-care bill for the balance of this Congressional session. He can pick it up again next January, with a Republican majority.

As for the President's personal performance, I think its a mixed bag. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I consider that Obamastein is simply an effort to shore up the base for the elections. If that is indeed the case, then the Left will no doubt appreciate Obama's willingness to confront Republicans. His pedantic tone, so off-putting to all of us bitter-clingers, generates fist-pumping among the legends-in-their-own-minds gentry liberals. Unfortunately, I see no evidence that this constitutes coattails to dismal congressional Democrats.

Other than that, I believe the entire event only served to diminish the President. It was interesting to note that Republican House and Senate leaders said very little, delegating the rhetorical slash-and-burn to lieutenants. They in effect looked more Presidential than the actual President did. His ill-concealed irritation, particularly at well-reasoned arguments simply does not play well in Peoria.

The obvious question is where do the Democrats go from here?

The entire debate, up until today, has been a version of medieval biblical authority, where widespread illiteracy conferred wide latitude to Priests to pronounce divine will based on the Word of God that no one had actually read.

Tort reform?

Its in there...but not really. The more they try to engage Republicans on the issue, the clearer it becomes who has the real ideas on fixing health-care and who is really being obstructionist.

With Scott Brown's victory, hope and change became hope and prayer, and now it seems that even God can't help the Democrats.

UPDATE: Instapundit reader points out that you can tell the Republicans won the day by the fact that the story isn't the lead on either the NYT or CNN website...