This sums up much of my view.
“What if 15 Republicans had agreed to support this bill, if tort reforms and reforms of medical incentives were included? Could a better package have been created??
The blame for a weak bill rests not on the Democrats for confronting this issue, but on the Republican caucus, which forfeited a golden opportunity to guide this policy to a more effective conclusion, choosing instead to gamble on Obama’s total failure. I support health reforms that Republicans favor, and am disgusted that they wasted such a real opportunity to get something out of this, which would have made the whole reform package better. When one party has to carry the other around like dead weight, don’t expect legislative miracles. Step up and compromise Republicans.
Small government doesn’t mean absence of governing,” – commenter Nathan Brown at the NYT.
The current Republican strategy? Three fold:
1. Proposing a bunch of idiotic amendments that Democrats have to procedurally vote against because if a single one of them is approved it requires a re-vote in both chambers on the health care bill. So the GOP is proposing amendments like “The federal government will refuse to give Viagra to child molesters,” “the federal government recognizes capitalism as the basis of our economy,” “the federal government wishes to not give tax money to ACORN,” “the federal government recognizes the value of the Christian faith,” etc. That way, they can then run ads saying “Congressman Murphy voted to give Viagra to child molesters. Congressman Murphy thinks there’s no value in the Christina faith,” etc.
2. Voting against the reconciliation package en masse, despite the fact that the great bulk of the reconciliation package are attempts to remedy Republican objections to the bill (striking down the cornhusker kickback, approving a tax to pay for some of it, etc.).
3. Shutting down all hearings that occur after 2 PM. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why.
I said at the very beginning of the health care debate that I was a winnable vote for conservatives on this issue, but where I wasn’t winnable was with an entrenchment strategy. It seemed to me, and still seems to me, that the Democratic party bent over backwards to try to win Republican votes, and if there was a winnable single one to be had (Snowe or whoever), I can’t imagine what a disproportionate impact she would have had on the package. Imagine, rolling back the clock to 2008, that 25 Senate Republicans and a caucus from the house approached President Obama and Ted Kennedy and said “let’s hammer something out.” Think they would have thrown them out of the room?
Instead, Republicans made the explicit calculation before any idea hit that table that they were going to opt out of the entire process and just hope for something that failed miserably. If that’s the choice, I’m with Josh Marshall: so be it.