GOP effort to recruit House Democrats to oppose health overhaul stalls

"A week after House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) announced an effort to persuade dozens of Democrats to abandon their support for health care reform, he appears to have made little headway, and several of the targets that he has identified said they have yet to hear from him," Roll Call reports. A Jan. 6 memo described 37 vulnerable House Democrats that Republicans hoped to sway against the health overhaul, but Roll Call says it couldn't find any who had actually been contacted (Kucinich, 1/19).

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said on Laura Ingraham's radio show Monday, "If this health care reform bill doesn't pass, it is the end of the Obama agenda. … It's pretty clear that they're going to use every trick imaginable ... to shove this down the throats of the American people," Politico reports (Shiner, 1/18).