It looks less and less likely that we'll get health-care reform - not just this year, but anytime in the foreseeable future.

That's a tragedy, not only because we so badly need reform but also because of what its failure means. Thanks to a Senate rule and the Republicans' intention to use it routinely, a minority of US Senators - 41 out of 100 - can stop anything they want to. And apparently they want to stop everything President Obama proposes.

Common sense says that the Republicans can't be as united as they appear. Surely somebody agrees with Obama on something. And Republicans insist that they want to work with Obama and Democrats in Congress.

But the evidence says the opposite. The latest example: Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, who has put a "blanket hold" on 70 of President Obama's nominees to important positions. It's not that Shelby thinks the 70 aren't qualified; he's trying to leverage some pork for his state.

The country, said the Times' Frank Rich on Sunday, is "paralyzed."

And Thomas Friedman had this assessment: "It was hard to read President Obama's eloquent State of the Union address and not feel torn between his vision for the coming years and the awareness that the forces of inertia and special interests blocking him - not to mention the whole Republican Party - make the chances of his implementing that vision highly unlikely. That is the definition of ‘stuck.' And right now we are stuck."

There are consequences to this. Not only will we not be able to address the nation's enormous problems, but our dithering and in-fighting will hurt our reputation and our leadership ability internationally.

Friedman, who was writing from the World Economic Forum at Davos, said people from other countries were voicing something he's never heard before: concern about "political instability" in the US.

"We're making people nervous," said Friedman.

While the US searches for more stimulus money to help the economy, "the biggest stimulus of all is hiding in plain sight," wrote Friedman. "And that is ending our political paralysis and the pall of uncertainty it is casting over everything from the cost of my health care to the cost of my energy to the way our biggest banks can do business."

If Republicans and Democrats "continue with their duel-to-the-death paralysis," said Friedman, "no amount of stimulus will give us the sustained growth and employment we need."

The president seems to still hold out hope that he can win the support of at least a few Republicans. He's inviting Republicans and Democrats to a February 25 "summit" on health-care reform. The Republicans' response? Fine, but Obama must agree to start all over with reform.

Obama's best bet, probably, is to do what he tried to do late last week: inspire the timid among his own party. "If anybody's searching for a lesson from Massachusetts," Obama said, "I promise you the answer is not to do nothing."

In his January 27 column in the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Frank advised Obama to pick a fight, "preferably one that forces the obstructionists of the right to take the side of privilege." A fight with the financial industry, to be specific.

And Frank Rich recalled the record of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who refused to let Americans forget how they got into the mess they were in. Nearly four years into his presidency, wrote Rich, "Roosevelt was still railing against the ‘hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing government' he had inherited. He reminded unemployed and destitute radio listeners that there had been ‘nine crazy years at the ticker' and ‘nine mad years of mirage' followed by three long years of bread lines and despair."

And, noted Rich, "FDR soon won re-election in the greatest landslide the country had seen."

But Democrats have their eyes on this year's midterm elections, which apparently will control everything from now to November. As a result, Democrats in the Senate have left the president looking ineffective. And it is the Republicans who look decisive and powerful.