Healthcare Waterloo

[lucyrich 20]

http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo

As a moderate, libertarian-leaning person who has consistently voted Democratic for the past decades, I never thought I'd find myself actually agreeing with points made by, of all people, a G.W. Bush speechwriter speaking out to conservatives. But he's got some points...

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.

...

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

...

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No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed.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.

...

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.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I listened to Frum talk last night as part of panel and reiterated those points. While David Gergen sees the way this legislation was voted on (along party lines) as a disturbing trend of polarity, I think it has more to do with a game of who can score the most political points. This bill had 200 Republican amendments in it but you wouldn't know that by listening to House Minority Leader John Boehner. The doomsday rhetoric from the Republicans up until the final moments of the vote was almost comical. They'd get a House member speak who is also a doctor to add legitimacy to their argument, but then those doctors turned politicians would use terms like "big government takeover" and immediately dumb it down to partisan hackery.

Both parties gambled on this legislation - the Republicans were trying to score political points, while the Democrats were willing to gamble their political future by supporting legislation they believed in the hearts was the right thing for America.

[Brother Hesekiel 2,236]

A big fan of Thomas Jefferson and, in theory, the maxim that the Government should only interfere with people's lives where absolutely necessary, I've been an outspoken Obama proponent since the early days, simply because I believed in change we can believe in.

Although Dennis Kucinich is my dream President, I believed that Obama would end the stupid wars before going to the bathroom. I believed that he would tell the big corporations to go #### themselves. I believed he would implement universal health care, Canada-style, or at least a solid public option. I believed in dramatic change, leadership, and action. None of this happened. The liberals, and I consider myself somewhat of a liberal libertarian (a prima facie oxymoron), are disappointed in Obama because he didn't do enough, because he pushed bipartisanship with those whose only objective was and still is to see him fail.

The new health care bill is 10% of what we wanted. Whatever. Now, when can I sign up? In 2013, you say? Are you f*cking kidding me? How about July 1, 2010, or at least January 1, 2011?

All that aside, try to take Medicare, another "socialist" program (let's call it "public" program) away from the public and get ready to be executed. The idiots, who are too dumb to see what good any form of health care reform will do for them, will realize eventually that they will never want to go back to the current status quo. So they scream, first loud, then more silent, until they will shut up entirely, save for the dumbest of the dumb among the human beings, the tea-partiers.

And when that happens, they will look at the Republicans and ask: why in the world did you try to take this away from us? And if they do, the Republican party is dust in the wind. The only question--and that in light of the late implementation of reform--remains: will the public see the light before the midterms or after?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

[Nagishkaw 510]

the Republican party is dust in the wind.