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Bad enough their affairs and their religious frat-house hijinks continue to make headlines, now some Senate GOPs are talking about inside-strategy  – talk Arizona’s Jon Kyl calls "unfortunate."

What, exactly, is unfortunate, Senator? That your colleagues are making the defeat of Obama’s health care reform a political gambit, or that they are talking out loud about it?

"I don’t agree with that kind of language," said the Senator, when read comments from Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and James Inhofe, R-Okl. "What Jim DeMint said is he wanted to break the momentum and the inevitability of passing these bills. [The White House] said we had to pass stimulus and do it immediately or else the economy would see… eight percent unemployment. It’s now going to 10 percent. And what we are saying is slow this down so that we don’t make another bad mistake here." 

See, Kyl wants to slow down health care, not defeat it like his Senate GOP colleagues. This sixty-year-long national conversation we’ve had about universal health care, since Harry Truman first proposed it, just hasn’t gone on quite long enough to suit Senator Kyl. (Who has publicly-funded health care for himself and his family.)

Sixty years isn’t "immediately," by the way.

But Kyl’s objections aren’t political! Heaven forfend a politician be political! Political implications are "unfortunate" — in public.

"But I do think that because the language has a political implication, it’s unfortunate," the Arizona Republican added, during his appearance on Fox News Sunday. "Both sides talked about the politics of these issues. I don’t think we ought to be focused on that."

So what’s really "unfortunate" about what DeMint and Inhofe said, Senator Kyl? It’s "unfortunate" they talked about political strategy outside the caucus. It’s "unfortunate" they let the cat out of the bag. It’s "unfortunate" they tipped your team’s play in public.

The Senate GOP needs to face facts: stopping health care reform can’t be spun as anything other than stopping health care reform. Trying to look like they are doing anything other than trying to break the momentum of reform won’t look to Americans like anything other than delay. And delay is the enemy of reform.

But talking about that in public, now that’s "unfortunate."  First rule of killing health care reform is the same first rule of Fight Club: don’t talk about killing health care reform.

(Help FDL Action urge Congress to stay in session to pass health care reform; delay means defeat!)