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For a candidate who was elected by running against “politics as usual,” Barack Obama (D-Chi) has proven to be a quick study. His much ballyhooed health care reform summit is just the latest example of no holds barred political maneuvering. Following on the specious pleas for bipartisanship with which he leavened his State of the Union address, Obama’s offer to consider Republicans’ ideas on health care reform has all the earmarks of an ambush waiting to happen.

If he were sincere in his desire to craft a mutually acceptable bill, he would scrap the unwieldy, overwhelmingly despised leviathans pushed through Congress, and promise to start afresh. Instead, he designated those bills as the starting point, placing Republicans in a no-win situation.

The smart move would be to say “Thanks, but no thanks” to the President’s offer. It is impossible to make an unworkable bill better by adding to it, which means even if the Democrats agree to include such cherished conservative ideas as tort reform, insurance portability and the ability to purchase out-of-state policies, Republicans would still be obligated to vote against it.

For one thing, any provisions for limiting malpractice pay outs, or tightening standards under which malpractice suits could be brought would be so full of loopholes and convoluted qualifiers as to render them unenforceable. This in inevitable as the Democrats are no more likely to alienate trial lawyers than they are union leaders or the Hollywood establishment.

Since the existing bills place all private insurance policies under the control of the Health Care Secretary who alone has the authority to determine what each insurer must cover, this will result in uniform national standards, thereby rendering the ability to purchase out-of-state policies moot. There is no advantage for a New Yorker to buy a policy from Kentucky if that policy is identical to those in New York. Therefore, this conservative goal is the one most likely to be accepted.

Since boycotting the summit would give the Democrats a much-needed weapon to use against the resurgent Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections, it is a nonstarter. Republicans have to show up, and they have to hope for the best.

Yet they don’t need to walk into the ambush blindly. There are steps they can and should take, starting today. The most important measure is to ramp up criticism of the existing bills. They should stress that the bills are unworkable, unreadable, and contain items the consequences of which are unknown and unknowable. One example of the sort of unforeseen consequences the bills contain is the state of men’s athletic programs in America’s colleges and universities.

When Congress passed the Education Amendments to the Civil Rights Act in 1972, there was no reference to athletics in Title IX, yet that provision was interpreted to prevent schools from allowing more males than females to participate in intermural athletics. Since more males than females are interested in sports, Title IX as interpreted has forced universities to scrub programs in tennis, wrestling and track and field. Again, this was not the original intent of the legislation, nor was it anticipated in any fashion. Yet this is the result.

The existing bills contain more than 2,000 pages promising similar, and equally unforeseen, consequences. The bills were assembled piecemeal in order to induce certain individual Congressmen and women to come on board. They aren’t coherent works, and cutting and pasting them will make them even worse.

Republicans have to stress that they will not support such legislative travesties, and should emphasize that the majority of Americans support their position. They should say this, not once, but constantly. This should be their mantra heading into the summit. They should further remind the President and his legislative henchmen that the public’s opposition, far from being the result of a failure to properly explain the measures, has increased each time Obama talked about them.

Beyond blanket opposition to the existing bills, Republicans should reiterate their, and the public’s opposition to any wholesale make over, or takeover, of the medical industry. They should delineate their proposed reforms. They should fill the airwaves with their proposals, not just describing them, but offering detailed explanations of what they entail, and what benefits will accrue to the public.

They need to go into the summit with the burden of change resting squarely on the shoulders of the architects of this legislative fiasco. Democrats need to be forced into a corner where they have to explain why they don’t want to include Republican proposals. They are the ones who have to explain why they won’t work. If they can do so, they might  win. If they can’t, the Republicans will escape the ambush, and possibly even turn the tables. They can and must demonstrate that they are the party of ideas when it comes to health care reform.

There is much to be said for being the “Party of No” when the American people abhor the policies being opposed, but there is even greater merit in being the party that gives voters what they want and need.