“There’s Something There”: GOP ‘Confronting A New Reality’ On Healthcare
The Obama administration won’t have an official announcement on December’s health care enrollment numbers for a few more weeks, but chances are good that we’ll see a spike in the number of newly enrollment Americans. At the end of November, the Affordable Care Act had helped bring coverage to about 1.2 million people; by the end of this month, that total will include millions more.
And with each new enrollment, it slowly dawns on congressional Republicans that the larger calculus has changed in fundamental ways. Jonathan Weisman reported overnight that GOP policymakers are “confronting a new reality.”
The enrollment figures may be well short of what the Obama administration had hoped for. But the fact that a significant number of Americans are now benefiting from the program is resulting in a subtle shift among Republicans.
“It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away,” said Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin and a Tea Party favorite. “There’s something there. We have to recognize that reality. We have to deal with the people that are currently covered under Obamacare.”
And that underscores a central fact of American politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act during the Depression: Once a benefit has been bestowed, it is nearly impossible to take it away.
Quite right. The Republican repeal crusade, whether the party wants to admit it or not, is over. Sure, Boehner & Co. can schedule a few dozen more repeal votes to help Tea Partiers feel warm and fuzzy, but even that’s less likely in light of the millions of consumers who’ve signed up for coverage – in an election year, candidates don’t generally thrive running on a platform that says, “Vote for me so I can take health care benefits away from your family.”
Indeed, GOP officials are desperate to talk about the “cancellation notices” a small sliver of the population received, but it gets a little tricky for these same Republicans to draw up plans to cancel millions more health care plans on purpose.
As we discussed a few weeks ago, the fight over health care is no longer an abstraction over hypothetical benefits. There’s a profound difference between “Republicans are voting to deny you a benefit you don’t yet enjoy” and “Republicans are voting to take away your health insurance and replace it with nothing.” The former struck GOP officials as plausible; the latter is politically suicidal.
So, as of this minute, what’s the Republican position on health care? No one, including GOP policymakers themselves, has any idea. For years, it was a straightforward push to repeal the entirety of the law, regardless of the consequences or human suffering. Now, some still want to pretend repeal is possible, others want to tinker around the edges with “reforms.” Some believe it’s time for Republicans to craft a policy alternative of their own to present to voters, others believe incessant complaining should be enough to give the GOP a boost on Election Day.
“The hardest problem for us is what to do next,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Weisman.
Ya don’t say.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 27, 2013
“Fast And Loose With The Facts”: Lying About Obamacare Continues As Campaign Season Begins
You may want to sit down before reading this: Republicans aren’t being totally truthful about the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As the 2014 midterm elections approach, conservative groups are beginning to hit the airwaves with spots targeting vulnerable Democrats and their support for the health law — and the ads are playing fast and loose with the facts.
Americans for Prosperity, the tax-exempt conservative action group created by brothers Charles and David Koch, took out two ads against vulnerable Democrats: Rick Nolan of Minnesota’s 8th District and Ann Kuster of New Hampshire’s 2nd District. Both focus on the health-care law, and they are important to dissect because they are the first trickles of what is sure to be a torrent of anti-ACA advertising.
The ad against Nolan features a middle-aged Minnesota resident named Randy Westby, who [http://youtu.be/-VVwc60M8zg]says he lost his health care plan because it no longer qualified for purchase in the exchanges. “I’ve had three heart attacks in the last six years. Health care is something that’s essential, and my life depends on it,” he continues.
The ad leans heavily on Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” designation for President Obama’s “if you like your plan, you can keep it” claim, and gives the strong impression that sick people are much worse off under Obamacare.
But was Westby able to find another plan? Four million to five million people probably had their plan canceled because of updated coverage requirements, but the administration believes fewer than 500,000 of those people are still looking for another plan. The ad doesn’t tell us if Westby is one of those people.
Nor does it note that he can’t be disqualified from any of the plans on the exchanges because of his preexisting condition — and three heart attacks in six years is one heck of a preexisting condition. Are the plans available to him cheaper than what he had before? How much better is the coverage? We don’t know, although given Westby’s medical history and apparent age, it seems he is exactly the type of person most likely to benefit from how the new individual market is structured.
The New Hampshire ad is more general and features an actress, but it relies on the same central and shaky claim that “millions of people” are losing coverage. Both ads hit the Democrats in question for voting to keep the ACA in place. (Aside from firing up the conservative grass roots, there was a good political reason for all those repeal votes in the House: to get vulnerable Democrats on the record, again and again.)
A focus on horror stories like these is the likely new Republican approach to Obamacare, as the New York Times outlines today. “It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told the times. “There’s something there. We have to recognize that reality. We have to deal with the people that are currently covered under Obamacare.”
But Westby may well be one of these people. And he may be getting better coverage. These will be the battle lines for the upcoming year: Republicans are gearing up to tell the horror stories, and Democrats will have to respond with stories of their own — the eight million to 10 million people who will be getting coverage under Obamacare by the end of March.
By: George Zornick, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, December 27, 2013
“The GOP’s Growing Divide”: The Provocateurs Can Be Counted On To Keep Far-Right Anger And Resentment At A Rolling Boil
The Republican Party, which should have the wind at its back, enters 2014 in disarray bordering on open warfare.
President Obama and the Democrats have had, let’s face it, a bumpy few months. The debut of the Affordable Care Act was not quite the hair-pulling, garment-rending, world-historical disaster that some critics claim, but it was — and remains — messy enough to buff the shine on the GOP’s badly tarnished brand.
A CNN poll released Thursday found that 49 percent of those surveyed said they would prefer to be represented by a Republican in Congress, while 44 percent favored a Democrat. That’s not much of a margin, but it’s a big change from two months ago when 50 percent preferred a Democrat and just 42 percent preferred a Republican.
Such generic polls are of limited use in predicting what will happen in November. But the numbers do suggest that the GOP is back in the game. Voters appear willing to listen to what the party has to say.
If only the GOP had a message.
There is one proposition on which the party’s warring factions agree: “We don’t like Obama’s Affordable Care Act.” But there is a lack of consensus, to put it mildly, on how this visceral dislike of a president and his signature policy initiative should translate into concrete political action.
For Republicans — to invert a classic George W. Bush bon mot — Obamacare has somehow become a divider, not a uniter. In a year when the GOP may have a legitimate chance of capturing the Senate, several primary contests appear likely to devolve into bloody battles over Obama’s health-care reforms — not whether to oppose them, but how.
In Georgia, for example, one of the leading candidates to replace retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss is Rep. Jack Kingston. He has voted repeatedly — and fruitlessly — with his House Republican colleagues to defund the Affordable Care Act. But when he suggested recently that to “just step back and let this thing fall to pieces on its own” was not “the responsible thing to do,” opponents quickly attacked Kingston as some kind of quisling who was waving a flag of surrender.
In fact, Kingston was simply acknowledging reality. Obamacare is the law. Memories of the program’s incompetent launch will fade. Republicans are going to have to decide whether to collaborate in making the Affordable Care Act work better — or risk being seen as working against the nation’s best interests.
On a range of issues, this is the party’s essential dilemma. Ideologues want to continue the practice of massive, uncompromising resistance to anything Obama tries to accomplish. Pragmatists want the GOP to demonstrate that it can be reasonable and trustworthy, on the theory that voters want their government to function well and won’t put a bunch of anti-government extremists in charge of running it.
Keep in mind that despite the findings of that CNN poll, other surveys show the GOP still has a ton of work to do. A recent Wall Street Journal poll reported that 48 percent of respondents had “negative feelings” toward the Republican Party, as opposed to 39 percent who felt negatively toward the Democratic Party.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), took a giant step for pragmatism by negotiating a budget deal with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) — and the ideological wing of the party freaked out. House Speaker John Boehner, as rock-ribbed a Main Street conservative as you’ll ever meet, is routinely attacked on far-right Web sites as some kind of squishy moderate.
The question of how the GOP should proceed really should be a no-brainer. But after cynically taking advantage of the huge jolt of energy provided by tea party activists, the Republican establishment is finding that these true believers don’t necessarily listen when they’re told to go sit in a corner and shut up.
The no-compromises GOP base is fertile fundraising territory for potential presidential candidates, such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and for pressure groups such as Heritage Action and the Club for Growth. So these provocateurs can be counted on to keep far-right anger and resentment at a rolling boil — and resist the establishment’s attempt to lower the temperature.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is expected to spend up to $50 million to ensure that the Republican Party chooses no extremist “loser candidates” for Senate races. As Scott Reed, the chamber’s chief political strategist, told the Wall Street Journal: “That will be our mantra: No fools on our ticket.”
Wanna bet?
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 26, 2013
“Duck Dynasty Bigots Will Fade Into Obscurity”: The Robertsons Are Country-Clubbers Posing As Rednecks
Now that I’ve actually seen a few episodes, Duck Dynasty is relatively harmless entertainment. Whatever “reality TV” means, it’s definitely not that. It’s a semi-scripted sitcom, basically cornball self-parody. Think Hee Haw without the music. I find it utterly inane, but then I don’t watch TV with children.
The “tell” is the show’s women; cute Southern sorority girls turned mommies. In real life, no way would those women tolerate their “menfolk” running around looking like a truckload of ZZ Top impersonators. They’re also not going on TV with hay in their hair like some Hollywood director’s idea of a country girl. Every comedy needs a straight man; on Duck Dynasty it’s the women.
But realism? Please. The beards, hair and overalls are costumes every bit as theatrical as the outfits the Rolling Stones wear onstage. In the rural Arkansas county where I live, you could hang around the feed store for a month without seeing anybody like Duck Dynasty “patriarch” (and head bigot) Phil Robertson. And if you did, his wife wouldn’t have any teeth.
The Robertsons are country-clubbers posing as rednecks. Duck hunting itself — requiring, as it does, quite a bit of expensive gear and pricey leases — is mainly a rich man’s pastime in the South. Deer hunting makes economic sense; duck hunting’s a luxury. It’s what doctors, lawyers and bankers do when the weather’s too lousy for golf. Bill Clinton used to go duck hunting once a year to prove he loved guns.
(My own most recent—and final—duck hunting trip began with me tasked with lugging an outboard motor across a muddy soybean field at 5:30 AM. Never again.)
But I digress. Although many Southerners wince at yokel stereotypes, the basic Duck Dynasty joke is that every redneck is a Peter Pan at heart. The Robertson men spend their time bickering like children and making mischief with pickup trucks, ATVs, shotguns, handguns, deer rifles, chainsaws, outboard motors, dynamite, etc. Basically anything that makes loud noises and/or throws mud around.
How long, I wonder, before the Duck Dynasty boys endorse the “Bad Boy” brand of riding mowers? Currently represented by a half-clothed model urging guys to “Get a Bad Boy, Baby!” these machines have the magical capacity to convert a tax accountant mowing a suburban half-acre under his wife’s supervision to a daredevil NASCAR racer. Yee Haw!
But the laughter ended abruptly when “Duck Commander” Phil Robertson inserted himself into the nation’s vituperative culture wars. The whole thing looked like a publicity stunt gone wrong—possibly successful in the short run, but almost certain to prove destructive in the end.
Concerning which, a few thoughts:
First, Sarah Palin and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal notwithstanding, nobody has a First Amendment right to appear on TV. Make controversial public pronouncements deeply offensive to your employers, and you’d better have a backup plan.
The creator and producer of Duck Dynasty is one Scott Gurney, who once appeared in a gay-themed film called The Fluffer. (Don’t ask.)
The guy helps make you rich and famous, and you denounce gays as evil? That’s appalling.
Second, it has nothing to do with Christianity. Robertson didn’t just say he’s against gay marriage, nor even that God is. He spoke in the coarsest possible terms about homosexuality, equating it with bestiality.
He’s elsewhere characterized gay men and women as “full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God haters, they are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless, they invent ways of doing evil.”
Here’s my favorite moral philosopher, Fox News’ own Bill O’Reilly:
“It’s not about the Bible, or believing or not believing in the Bible. It’s singling out a group, could be any group, and saying to that group ‘Hey, you’re not worthy. You’re not worthy in the eyes of the Lord, or in the eyes of God, you’re not worthy because of who you are.’ So once you get that personal, once you get down into that kind of a realm, problems arise.”
Third, 10 years ago, many of the same people portraying Robertson as a martyr burned Dixie Chicks CDs and cheered their banishment from country radio stations for the terrible crime of saying they were embarrassed by George W. Bush before everybody was.
And those girls have genuine talent.
Fourth, as for the happy, singing darkies of Robertson’s Louisiana childhood, where are they on Duck Dynasty? Know what the African-American population of Monroe/West Monroe is? It’s roughly 60 percent. I’ve seen no black faces on the program.
Another prominent American from West Monroe is Boston Celtics great Bill Russell—a black man who’s been known to have strong opinions about race. Maybe Robertson ought to talk with him, although it wouldn’t be easy.
Duck Dynasty may be this month’s right wing cause célèbre. Longer term, however, unapologetic bigots always fade into obscurity, basically because they embarrass people.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, December 26, 2013
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