Healthcare Summit: No GOP Chicks

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced today that eight GOP Senators, including himself, will attend Barack Obama's big "health care summit" on Thursday. They are: Mitch, Jon, Lamar, John, Chuck, Mike, Tom, and John. 

Back during the Sotomayor confirmation, I wrote that the GOP's glaring lack of elected female officeholders becomes especially glaring when the party is trying to oppose a woman or a women's issue. Well, here we are again.

Not that health care reform is just a "women's issue" -- but what really is? My point is that it's one of those topics -- like the confirmation of a woman Justice -- when it just looks really, really bad that your party has got no women at the table.

We'll see whether the House Republicans think to bring along one of their caucus's few women. We do know that all five of the House GOP leaders who were named on the Obama invite are men -- so far, we have confirmation of only John (Boehner) and Eric (Cantor).

Not that the Democrats are going to be models of gender equality. Just one of the nine Democratic Senators who will attend is a woman (Patty Murray), and Nancy Pelosi is the only female House Democrat on the official invite -- in fact, the only woman at all on the official guest list.

By the way, if you're wondering, those GOP Senators are McConnell, Kyl, Alexander, McCain, Grassley, Enzi, Coburn, and Barrasso. The first six range from age 66 to 76; the last two are young pups (61 and 57) who get to attend because they are actual medical doctors.

So really, it'll be a bunch of old white guys sitting around a table deciding your health care. What's new, right ladies?