“A Revisionist History Mistrial”: Jim DeMint’s Silly Argument On Obamacare Was Soundly Overruled
The Heritage Foundation’s Jim DeMint – the proto Ted Cruz – has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning where he makes the case against Obamacare and explains why his organization pushed Cruz and the tea party right to shut down the government (and, presumably, why Cruz is threatening to try to do it again). Most of it is pretty standard anti-Obamacare fare, but one section is worth noting for its casual dismissal of last year’s election results.
Responding to the notion that Republicans should lay off Obamacare because the president won and they lost last November, DeMint writes:
… ObamaCare was not the central fight in 2012, much to the disappointment of conservatives. Republicans hoped that negative economic news would sweep them to victory, and exit polls confirmed that the economy, not health care, was the top issue. The best thing is to declare last year’s election a mistrial on ObamaCare.
Sorry, but you don’t get to declare a mistrial on election results because you don’t like them.
First, this raises the obvious question: Would DeMint entertain a similar argument against repealing Obamacare were Mitt Romney president right now? If negative economic news had indeed swept the GOP to victory, would anyone on the right find credible the argument that because the economy, not Obamacare, had been the big issue of the campaign, the GOP had no business trying to roll back the law?
Of course they would not – because the mistrial argument is silly. It’s true that exit polls showed the economy to be overwhelmingly the biggest issue of the campaign, with 59 percent of voters citing it as their top issue and health care a distant second at 18 percent. But there’s a difference between something being the driving issue of the campaign and being the only one. Voters didn’t cast their ballots in an issue void and it’s not like Obamacare was some sub-rosa topic that wasn’t properly litigated. It was the focus of politics for most of President Obama’s first term. Mitt Romney made it a mainstay of his campaign and ran ads on it.
So the fact that voters had bigger concerns isn’t grounds for a mistrial, but instead is a clarifying fact about their priorities. Last November, voters, having had years to digest the Obamacare wars, decided that the law isn’t the existential crisis that DeMint, Cruz and their ilk do and also decided to rehire the fellow who instituted it. Oh, and among the 18 percent of voters who did name health care as their top priority, three-quarters voted for President Obama.
I suppose there is one positive to come out of DeMint’s op-ed. By arguing that elections don’t count when it comes to secondary issues, he’s implicitly saying that elections do have consequences in regard to the top issue. That being the case, I look forward to DeMint and the Heritage Foundation graciously ending their opposition to President Obama’s economic agenda.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, October 18, 2013
“What Lesson Was Learned?”: For Republicans, It’s About “The How” Rather Than “The What” And “The Why”
So if the end of the fiscal crisis represents, as Ross Douthat calls it, a “Teachable Moment” for the GOP, what would that lesson, exactly, be? It mostly appears to be about strategy and tactics, not goals or ideology (or “principles” as ideologues like to say in their endless efforts to ascribe dishonesty and gutlessness to dissidents).
Even for Douthat, who clearly wants the memory of the Tea Folk (or to use his term, “populist”) failure in this incident to be seared into the collective memory of Republicans, it’s mostly about the how rather than the what and the why:
The mentality that drove the shutdown — a toxic combination of tactical irrationality and the elevation of that irrationality into a True Conservative (TM) litmus test — may have less influence in next year’s Beltway negotiations than it did this time around, thanks to the way this has ended for the defunders after John Boehner gave them pretty much all the rope that they’d been asking for. But just turn on talk radio or browse RedState or look at Ted Cruz’s approval ratings with Tea Partiers and you’ll see how potent this mentality remains, how quickly it could resurface, and how easily Republican politics and American governance alike could be warped by it in the future.
So for undeluded conservatives of all persuasions, lessons must be learned. If the party’s populists want to shape and redefine and ultimately remake the party, they can’t pull this kind of stunt again.
The problem was “the stunt,” not the violent antipathy towards a pale version of universal health coverage or the conviction that the New Deal/Great Society legacy is fatal to America or the belief that nearly half the country is composed of satanic blood-suckers and baby-killers.
Eric Cantor stressed this distinction between strategy and tactics, on the one hand, and ideology on the other in his speech to yesterday’s doomed House Republican Conference:
“We all agree Obamacare is an abomination. We all agree taxes are too high. We all agree spending is too high. We all agree Washington is getting in the way of job growth. We all agree we have a real debt crisis that will cripple future generations. We all agree on these fundamental conservative principles. . . . We must not confuse tactics with principles. The differences between us are dwarfed by the differences we have with the Democratic party, and we can do more for the American people united,” he told them.
In fact, I’m beginning to get the sense that the more loudly a conservative denounces the tactics of the fiscal fight as idiotic, the more he or she can be counted on to insist on agreeing with the ideology that motivated the idiocy in the first place.
One of my favorite characterizations of the whole “defund Obamacare” crusade was by the conservative blogger Allahpundit:
If “defund” was more likely than repeal, it was more likely in the sense that an 85-yard field goal is more likely than a 90-yard one.
But don’t confuse that strategic argument with any broader sense that conservatives or Republicans should rethink their entire militant opposition to the Affordable Care Act. No, it just means recognizing that getting rid of this law–as opposed to obstructing it and making sure the number of people benefitting from it is as small as possible–must await the kind of victory in 2016 that eluded the party last year.
Don’t get me wrong here: there’s great value to the nation in convincing one of our two major political parties to respect the results of elections and eschew wildly disruptive legislative strategies and tactics. But even if that “lesson was learned,” and the jury’s still out on that proposition, it’s not the same as a serious reconsideration of today’s radical conservatism, which may well emerge from this incident as strong as ever.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 17, 2013
“Republican Collapse”: They Picked A Goal They Couldn’t Achieve And A Means They Couldn’t Sustain
Congress has finally worked out a deal to end the government shutdown and dodge default, but not before the Republican Party demonstrated to Americans just how conflicted and dangerous it is.
Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, this week described our current Congress as a greater danger to national security than Al Qaeda, writing, “We don’t tend to talk about Congress as — at this stage — what it plainly is: the clearest and most present danger in the world to the national security of the United States.”
That is what the G.O.P.-led House has brought us. Conservatives outside the chamber know defeat when they see it, and want to live to fight another day. But they beat their chests in vain as their laments fall on the deaf ears of the far-right political death squads.
On Tuesday, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial pages blasted:
“This is the quality of thinking — or lack thereof — that has afflicted many GOP conservatives from the beginning of this budget showdown. They picked a goal they couldn’t achieve in trying to defund ObamaCare from one House of Congress, and then they picked a means they couldn’t sustain politically by pursuing a long government shutdown and threatening to blow through the debt limit.”
Senator John McCain said this week, “Republicans have to understand we have lost this battle, as I predicted weeks ago, that we would not be able to win because we were demanding something that was not achievable.”
Senator Lindsey Graham put it more bluntly: “We really did go too far. We screwed up.”
But, far-right elements of the House cannot be reasoned with. They prefer to go down in a blaze of glory — or at least take the country down in one.
And arguably no one is more the face of this disaster than Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, labeled by one New York Republican representative, Peter King, as a “fraud” and “false prophet,” who helped orchestrate it.
The Houston Chronicle editorial board on Tuesday took the extraordinary step of trying to withdraw its endorsement of Cruz, an endorsement that no doubt helped get him elected. An editorial posted to the paper’s Web site began, “Does anyone else miss Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison?”, the senator Cruz replaced. It went on:
“When we endorsed Ted Cruz in last November’s general election, we did so with many reservations and at least one specific recommendation — that he follow Hutchison’s example in his conduct as a senator. Obviously, he has not done so. Cruz has been part of the problem in specific situations where Hutchison would have been part of the solution.”
It seems everyone is waking up to what a disaster this current Republican contingent of extremists has become and how poisonous they are to the functioning of our democracy. Better late than never, I suppose.
Cruz’s favorable ratings are underwater in Pew’s, Gallup’s, Fox News’ and Quinnipiac’s polling.
But then, Cruz doesn’t put much stake in polls, with their pesky numbers.
According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll taken last week, views of the Republican Party sank to record lows and 70 percent of respondents thought Republicans in Congress were putting their own political agenda ahead of what was good for the country.
The poll also found that negative feelings about the Tea Party had risen, with 47 percent saying they had negative feelings about the group, including 34 percent who described their feelings as “very negative.” Just 21 percent of Americans now say they feel positive about the group.
But when Cruz was asked Friday about the poll, he dismissed it as having a problematic methodology. He said: “If you seek out liberal Obama supporters and ask them their views, they’re going to tell you they’re liberal Obama supporters. That’s not reflective of where this country is.” In fact, it is Cruz’s methodology that is flawed. His grandiloquence may well be the undoing of the Grand Old Party.
According to a Pew Research report released Tuesday:
“A record-high 74% of registered voters now say that most members of Congress should not be reelected in 2014 (just 18% say they should). By comparison, at similar points in both the 2010 and 2006 midterm cycles only about half of registered voters wanted to see most representatives replaced.”
The report also found:
“An early read of voter preferences for the 2014 midterm shows that the Democrats have a six-point edge: 49% of registered voters say they would vote for or lean toward voting for the Democratic candidate in their district, while 43% support or lean toward the Republican candidate.”
Republicans terribly misplayed a weak hand on the government shutdown and the debt ceiling. There was never any chance of success other than scaring the president and the Democrats into caving. President Obama and Harry Reid called their bluff and they were left with no real options.
This is an embarrassment for the country, yes, but it’s also an embarrassment for the Republican Party that lays bare their motives, tactics and intention. It may not be so easy for voters to forget this come next November.
As the conservative Matt Drudge tweeted on Wednesday: “Speaker Pelosi Part 2: Opening Jan 5, 2015.” If only.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, October 16, 2013
“Hey, Obamacare Complainers”: You Hypocrites, Regular Insurance Has Tons of Glitches Everyday
The nation’s new health-insurance exchanges, the online marketplaces for medical coverage that are an integral part of Obamacare, opened for business last week. Immediately the trouble began. Web pages went blank. Attempts to enroll in coverage were delayed, or altogether stymied, as sites crashed. Critics of the law pounced. “Too many unanswered questions and too many unsolved problems,” said U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah.
Yet there’s another way to see these growing pains: as evidence not of change but of continuity for consumers of health insurance in America. With each misstep, government officials are simply catching up to the record of headache-inducing frustrations produced by the longstanding private medical insurance system.
Whether you’re one of the 50 percent or so of Americans who already have private health insurance (mostly through an employer, as I do) or one of those who may now turn to the exchanges to buy coverage, the bureaucracy is often maddening. Sure, the Affordable Care Act may seem opaque and unwieldy, but make no mistake: Employer-provided healthcare—which offers plans by the very same companies now on the exchanges—is equally Byzantine. No wonder that only 22 percent of American consumers reported themselves as satisfied with the health care system in a 2012 survey from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.
A few weeks ago I had an all-too-typical experience. My insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross, sent me a letter saying, “It has come to our attention that we have been paying for certain . . . drugs that are not covered under your existing benefit plan.” Going forward, the letter added, my doctor would need to prescribe something different or I’d have to start paying for these particular medications myself.
And when would this kick in? According to one part of the letter, January 1, 2014. According to a different part of the letter, right away.
It concluded with the sentence I’ve come to dread most: “If you have any questions or concerns, please call the customer service number on your ID card.”
Bravely, I did. Forty-five minutes later, I had yet to talk to an actual human being. Finally, at the 50-minute mark, a customer-service representative showed up on the line. She was cheerful and peppy. I was not.
The Anthem representative was unable to clarify anything in the letter and asked if she could put me on hold while she did a little research. I said OK, but I made a special plea: to call me back if we somehow got disconnected. Just a week before, on another Anthem call—concerning a paid claim that Anthem said was unpaid—I’d gotten cut off after an hour or so on the phone. She assured me that she’d call me back, if need be.
Ten minutes later, the representative returned to tell me that the answer to when Anthem would stop covering my prescriptions was neither January 1 nor immediately. It was December 1.
Where did this new date suddenly come from? She couldn’t explain. I asked to speak to her supervisor directly. She countered with a classic chess move: I was put on hold for another 15 minutes. Then: “Thank you for calling Anthem Blue Cross. Good-bye.” The line went dead. Checkmate.
Despite my plea and the representative’s promise, no one from the company called me back. I have yet to find the stomach to phone Anthem again.
Sure, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act is hitting some bumps, especially in its early days. But before critics falsely brand these as the inevitable consequence of a “government takeover” of our healthcare system, let’s remember that when it comes to medical coverage, bureaucratic snafus are hardly the province of Obamacare alone.
By: Randye Hoder, Contributor, Time Magazine, October 9, 2013
“From Obsession To Insanity”: The GOP Is Unhinged By Obamacare
Whacking yourself on the head with a ball-peen hammer would be stupid. But doing it again and again — that’s insane.
Welcome to your U.S. House of Representatives, presently led by a pack of Tea Party Republicans. They are so crazed by Obamacare that they repeatedly hammer themselves over the head with it, having voted 46 times (so far) to dismantle, defund, delay, deny, and otherwise destroy this landmark health care bill — all to no avail. They would be hilarious, were they not so pathetic.
But now, their anti-government, anti-Obama obsession has turned into insanity. Acting as though the USA is nothing more substantial than a banana republic, this Tea Party clique of petty potentates has forced a shutdown of our national government. The craziest part of their stunt is the duplicitous claim that finally providing health care for millions of uninsured Americans will have, as one leader of the mad-dog pack put it, “horrific effects.”
Yet, even as they publicly insist that they’re heroes for trying to save the people from the horror of receiving fairly decent health coverage, the GOP hierarchy is quietly warning its members that defeating Obamacare now is essential to their own health. Why? Because they know the program will work, providing better care and nearly universal coverage at a cheaper price. It will become widely popular, and any politico who tries to kill it later will become wildly unpopular. Even the senator from Oz, Ted Cruz, understood that the program had to be aborted before it was born. It will be so loved, Cruz candidly conceded (as he desperately tried to suffocate Obamacare with a painfully-long “filibuster”), that the public will be “hooked” on it for the long haul.
Yes, Sen. Oz, the American people tend to support policies that are beneficial to them. What’s crazy is you and your cohorts thinking they’re crazy for thinking that.
So now, Dr. Hightower offers this advice: Don’t fume about the GOP’s lunatic effort to kill health care reform — just laugh at their farcical show. It won’t affect them, but it can improve your mental health.
For starters, take Ted Cruz’s 21-hour blabathon that he said would stop Obamacare in its tracks. Not only did he fail spectacularly, but senators voted 100 to zero against his crazy ploy. Yes, that means that even he ended up voting against it! What a hoot he is.
A shameful hypocrite, too. While going to extremes to keep millions of Americans from getting vitally needed health coverage, Cruz goes to great lengths to keep the people from being reminded of his own health care, past and present.
Having been born in Calgary, Canada, little Ted’s parents were able to take advantage of the country’s universal health care, or as the Tea Party darlings like to call it, “socialized” medicine. That’s right, for the first four years of Ted’s life in Calgary, he was covered under government subsidized healthcare. I find it absolutely hysterical that little Ted would grow up to throw a 21-hour-long temper tantrum over affordable health care for hardworking American people. Recently, Cruz had been repeatedly refusing to answer whether taxpayers covered his health care. Finally, he piously responded that he was eligible for taxpayer coverage, but had nobly declined.
Such slapstick! It turns out that Ted was fibbing, for he’s covered by his wife’s policy. As a millionaire top executive at Goldman Sachs, she and her family are given gold-plated Cadillac coverage by the Wall Street giant. Goldman pays some $40,000 a year for her and Ted’s policy (more than most families make in a year) — a benefit-cost that the firm passes on to us taxpayers by deducting it from its corporate tax bill. Hilarious, huh?
Then there’s the comic twist that’s included in Congress’ current government shutdown. While more than a million regular government workers are going without a paycheck, the congresscritters who forced the furlough continue to collect their $174,000 in annual pay. Some lawmakers are donating their checks to charity, but four out of five are happily pocketing theirs. “Dang straight,” barked Rep. Lee Terry. “I’ve got a nice house and a kid in college,” the Nebraska Republican said. “Giving our paycheck away when you still worked and earned it? That’s just not going to fly,” Terry told his constituents.
And that’s your Congress at work. Laugh ’til it hurts.
By: Jim Hightower, Featured Post, The National Memo, October 10, 2013
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