Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.It?s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they?ll compensate for today?s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:(1) It?s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November ? by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:A huge part of the blame for today?s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama?s Waterloo ? just as healthcare was Clinton?s in 1994.Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton?s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney?s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise ? without weighing so heavily on small business ? without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the ?doughnut hole? and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents? insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there ? would President Obama sign such a repeal?We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or ? more exactly ? with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?I?ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters ? but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say ? but what is equally true ? is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed ? if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office ? Rush?s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.So today?s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it?s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it?s Waterloo all right: ours.
Jonny_Paycheck
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Thanks for posting Jonny, I like hearing what Frum has to say..
another tweet on there:
"Hard to sleep right now... this is how my hero Strom Thurmond must have felt back in 1957. #healthcare #sadday
about 6 hours ago via web"
really though?
This probably goes without saying but you're f*cking deluded. The Republicans and their swinish corporate overlords did EVERYTHING they could to derail this, like a three year old falling limp and dragging its feet.
1) It appears that a significant percentage of Americans will now be able to get some form of healthcare without putting themselves in the poorhouse, in theory enabling some of them to eventually come off welfare, return to work, pay taxes, help the economy and generally make a positive contribution to society. Because all these things are now possible, and yet the opponents of such change want to leave, does this mean they no longer believe America is the greatest country in the world?
2) If they're really determined to leave the USA (presumably for a country where they don't have to worry about having Commie ideas like universal health care imposed upon them), where will they go?
No, no healthcare in the UK.
I don't care where they go I just hope the get the F*ck out sooner rather than later.
ive lived in NZ, AU, Sweden, England, Israel, Netherlands and always had no hassle with my medication, if i had to pay it was a pittance, yet im lead to believe it would be a different story in America. (im asthmatic)
why did the republicans fight this so hard?
healthcare is good yes?
is there something im missing? was there some major tradeoff somewhere?
serious question.
Health Insurance in the US is a for-profit enterprise...the reform would make those profits much less (by insuring sick people, porr people and not so poor people)so the rich becoming less rich is the most evil thing you can do according to a republican...therefore they were opposed to it. They viewed it has taking opportunity away, taking a freedom away.
As stupid as that sounds, that is the reason.
In other words, teh poor people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and pay for their own health care.
ahhh well F*ck em.
Go Mr. President.
Time to euthanize the fat people.
They are doing it to themselves.
The Democrats re-packaged largely Republican ideas and called it "reform" when it was really just tweaking the current system. That's how crazy the Grand Old Party has become -- not one of their members in the House could support something that, in previous years, they would approve unanimously. It's a victory the U.S. and the Democrats but discourse, oh man, stick another fork in poor, old discourse. This is going to come back and bite the GOP -- all of them dudes are crazy, and I wish they'd stand for something aside from that.
Privatise the "socialised" Military budget; dissenters shouldn't have to pay for the ongoing-War-on-Terror, nor should they receive it's protection in the event of military action waged on American soil. They should man-up and buy a gun, and then they can defend themselves like all real Americans.
Privatise "socialised" schooling; let the poor people remain stupid and poor, leaving more jobs for those who have gone through college at tremendous expense. It's only fair.
All roads should be toll-roads. If they fall into disrepair, who cares, a real American drives an off-road 4x4.
etc
etc
Yeah, but they're taking too long doing it, and in the meantime we're paying for their diabeetus supplies.
Or just do what the UK does and tax the hell out of cigarettes, putting the money back into healthcare. In theory.
THAT'S WHY WE KICKED YOUR ASSES OUTTA HERE! WE'RE NOT GONNA STAND FOR ANY ADVICE FROM YOU LIMEY BASTARDS, EVEN IF IT'S SENSIBLE!
I keed.
Looking forward to my next phone call with my Dad, who seriously saw the next American Civil War breaking out should healthcare reform get the go-ahead.
And punish the poor tobacco farmers? Are you crazy man!
B/W
Many states already tax the hell out of tobacco and alcohol.
Can we start a "my country's tax is worse than your's thread?"
'cos seriously, Americans moan about taxes... but they have it eeeeeeaaaasy. No f*cking jokes.
I wonder if a civil war DID break out, would those participants who didn't have healthcare coverage allow themselves to die if they were injured?
Amen to that. I would be bowled over, nay, gobsmacked if a single US state taxes something like tobacco anywhere near the levels seen in the UK, never mind any of my less guilty pleasures.
The flaw in that theory is that its mainly lower income folks who do our fighting for us, and they're the ones reaping the benefit of this bill. Although I'd certainly get a kick out of a bunch of well-off old white dudes strapping on flak jackets and charging the rest of us.
Over ten dollars for a single pack here, right? And we're not paying those prices because tobacco is difficult to get hold of here...
"I just had a mini-gun mounted to the roof of our stretch humvee - thinking what I'm thinking?"
Here in NYC it's right around $10 a pack nowadays, $4.50 of which is state and city tax. I know that it is much cheaper elsewhere though, especially if you live in a tobacco growing state.