Conservative David Frum on the (apparent) passage of health care reform:
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.
Right away, reading that paragraph, I was in shock. I cannot recall hearing another conservative admit this fairly obvious truth about the Republican strategy; that Republicans made a decision, regardless of the policy on offer, to not make any deals at all — even though Obama was clearly, transparently, flagrantly desperate for even a handful of Republican votes.
And to be fair, it was a strategy that almost worked, because of Ted Kennedy’s untimely death, and because Democrats in Congress are fractious and easily panicked. It probably would have worked without Nancy Pelosi.
What Frum doesn’t acknowledge is that conservatives actually got enormous concessions in the legislation, even though they didn’t give it a single vote. Quoting Ezra:
As Democrats came to realize that they couldn’t get Republican votes for the bill by adding policies that Republican senators supported, they began trimming their ambitions in order to keep their caucus together. As they came to realize that they couldn’t pass the legislation without their most conservative members, they gave their most conservative members a veto card over the bill’s provisions. The result is legislation that’s not only much more conservative and incremental than what past presidents have proposed, but is also much more conservative than the major health-care reforms — namely Medicare and Medicaid — that past presidents have passed. And Republicans got these substantive concessions not by making a deal, but by not making a deal.
Back to Frum:
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.
Again, I am stunned.
Not stunned by what Frum is saying — he’s absolutely correct, and everyone who pays attention has known that for months. There’s very little air between the “Obamacare” plan and what Republicans favored (and Democrats opposed) in the 1990s.
No, I’m stunned to hear a conservative admit it. Conservatives mostly — either because they’re liars, or because they’re genuinely ignorant of health care policy 101 — have been claiming that the Health Care Reform bill is so extreme it’s socialist! It’s the end of freedom! It’s a takeover of the economy! It’s just like the UK! Hearing a conservative acknowledge reality feels like being an actress in a TV commercial for York Peppermint Patties. It’s that refreshing.
Frum brings another unwelcome dose of reality to conservatives:
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?
Republicans will do well in November’s elections — they would have done so no matter what happened to this bill. The Democratic majority is too large to be sustained, especially in an off-year election. But if they run on promises of repeal! repeal! repeal!, then in 2011 they’ll have a bitterly disappointed base.
So why didn’t Republicans in Congress compromise?
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? […]
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.
Unfortunately, I can’t see any way any of that will change.
But I am thrilled that Health Care Reform — compromised as it is — is about to pass. I’ll go back to being pissed off at the Democrats soon enough, but right now, they done good. ((Unless, of course, they manage to drop the ball when they’re this close to victory. In which case the major egg on my face due to this post will be the very least of my concerns, believe me.)) To quote Frum one last time:
Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever.
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Healthcare ended Clinton’s rule? Really? I thought that he had stayed in power for another 6 years or so. The maximum allowed by law. Frum has a strange definition of a “waterloo”. Other than that, though, I have no major quibbles with what you’ve quoted.
* The buttons for easy html don’t appear to be working for me. Do they work for anybody else today?
Jake, I do recall the healthcare failure as the end of Clinton’s real potential to enact serious change. After that, he was boxed in by Newt Gingrich and the “Contract with America” Repubs, and all he could really do was triangulate, until Ken Starr hemmed him in even further. Maybe others saw this differently, but I don’t think Frum is entirely wrong.
(Also, Amp had to quote that section in order to insert the Abba clip!)
I agree (for the first time ever) with all that Frum has to say about the Republican Party’s failed strategies. Notice, I did not use the term “conservative.” In reality, there is nothing conservative about the right wing today. Since the days of Ronald Reagan, the right has mouthed fiscal moderation and moral values. But when given the chance, the right has never moved to make those values reality. Check the expenditures and government size differences when they came into power, the shrill statements of moral values with no actual real change, the sum totals of meaningful, positive legislation for the good of country that they passed in all those years. Bush II was not a hiccup in Republican rule, he was a natural extension of those bankrupt policies. The party has left its roots of Howard Taft and Barry Goldwater and embraced the philosophy of drowning the baby in the bath water. You can only say so many times that government is the problem and yet doing everything you can in mainly underhanded fashion to gain power before people begin to deem you a toxic force. I believe that moment and public realization has come. The Democrats may be cumbersome, but they are publicly making the effort to make change. It is easy to criticize them, but they do represent a positive rather than simply negative force. I will not be surprised to see the Republicans go the way of the Whigs, Federalists, and Bull Moose parties. At this stage, I wouldn’t miss them.
Actually, I thought that the end to Clinton’s ability to enact real change came when he got caught diddling an intern and lied about it.
Not that I had a huge concern with that myself, mind you. But the same people who have made a cult of pop culture and watch “reality shows” are mesmerized by such.
the major change clinton ran on was as a different democrat: a dnc guy, a (fiscal) conservative, and a reconstructed leftist in an age of triumphant capitalism. tony blair was similar.
so he delivered nafta, the repeal of glass-steagall, wall st friendly policies, and welfare reform. thats pretty significant for the time. he raised taxes responsably, balanced the budget, and presided over the IT revolution, globalization, and financial innovation: all of which influences us greatly today, for better or worse (i think better, through it can all be quite chaotic). That he allowed these movements to take thier natural path is to his credit. The more authoritarianleft would’ve resisted.
I could be wrong, but it seems that by maintaining a solid “no” block, the GOP empowered conservative Democrats to torpedo proposals for stronger progressive programs. Like, say, a strong public option (which Obama sold us out on, anyway.) Instead, we can hope for the best with health care exchanges. After forcing many of their ideas into the legislation so Obama could claim some kind of “bipartisanhip” (as if that was the goal), they came very close to sinking this bill altogether. As it is, the Republicans have their cake and can eat it, too. I really can’t see how the Republicans are hurt by this.
I could be wrong, but you’re absolutely right. :-P
If he really did get the support of industry by giving up something which never had a chance of passage anyway, then I think he did the right thing.
The primary reason we didn’t get a more liberal health care bill isn’t that Obama did bad things; it’s that liberals haven’t won enough elections. (ETA: Well, that plus stupid Senate rules that allow a minority of Senators to have a veto on all legislation.)
In terms of elections, I think Republicans chose the right strategy for maximizing their win in November.
However, if Health Care Reform does a lot of good — and I think it will — then in the long term, the Republican’s policy agenda will be hurt a lot, just as the success of Social Security and Medicare has hurt the Republican policy agenda a lot.
And I also think the Democrats will probably be more active (policywise) in the next year or two, following this victory, than they would have been following a major defeat on HCR. (Of course, a lot depends on if they’re going to take real steps to reform the filibuster rule.)
Beware of “entitlement reform.” A commenter on my blog raised that issue, which I think we can take seriously enough, given the past record of so-called “moderate” Democrats to exploit class warfare against the poor in a bid for the “reasonable center.” (cf. manju above.)
Outside the pundit class, is there real political momentum in that direction? And why did I just phrase it like that? Re-write: Will Reid and company really find the spine to do it? That’s better; less “corporate-y”.
Reid has said he intends to reform it when the new Senate begins (there’s an opening to change the rules at the start of each Senate). We’ll have to wait and see if he really does it.