“Petulant Little Children”: Why The Republican Obamacare “No Strategy At All” Strategy Fell Apart
After President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, conservative writer David Frum, who had been a speechwriter for George W. Bush, chided his compatriots for the strategy they had employed in opposing it. Had they worked with Obama on a compromise, he argued, the result could have been a more conservative version of the law; by simply opposing it in its entirety, they wound up with nothing once the law passed. For raising this criticism, Frum was declared a traitor and banished from the conservative movement; these days his (still conservative) ideas get a better hearing on the left than the right.
And what has been the Republican strategy on health-care reform since the ACA’s passage? Well, first they tried to kill it through the courts. That didn’t work, though they won for Republican governors the right to refuse the Medicaid dollars that would enable them to offer insurance to their states’ poor (congrats on that), though many of them are coming around to accept the money. In the one house of Congress they control, they’ve held dozens of symbolic repeal votes, so many that it’s become a national joke. They’re now threatening to shut down the government (very bad) or default on America’s debts (even worse) unless Obama agrees to shut the law down, a plan even many within their own party realize is insane. So they’ve ended up looking like petulant children who don’t know when they’ve lost, not to mention viciously cruel ideologues who would literally rather see people go without health insurance than allow them to get it through a system tainted in any way by contact with a law with Barack Obama’s signature on it.
So once again, they’re not getting what they want substantively, and they’re losing politically as well. Even Newt Gingrich—Newt Gingrich!—is criticizing them for not bothering to come up with the “replace” part of “repeal and replace.” Why didn’t they? It’s partly because, as I’ve argued before, the whole topic of health-care reform is something they just don’t care about. But Ed Kilgore adds an important insight: their stance of opposition to every single component of what is a pretty conservative reform plan not only left them defending the status quo, but has pushed them step by step so far to the right that they’ve now reached a point where they’ve almost rejected the very idea of insurance. They’re attacking Obamacare on the grounds that healthy people will have to buy insurance, but might not use it as much as sick people, even going so far as to encourage young people to stay uninsured. But that’s how insurance works! Is it a “bad deal” for many healthy young people? Absolutely, just like car insurance is a bad deal for people who never get into an accident, and homeowner’s insurance is a bad deal for people whose houses never burn down. You don’t have to be a health-care wonk to hear them saying these things and say, “Geez, these people are nuts.”
The real problem is that, as usually happens in a complex political world, the Republican “strategy” to oppose Obamacare was no strategy at all. It was a bunch of ad-hoc decisions, based on a mixture of reason, ill-informed judgment and emotion, made by people not necessarily working together, over an extended period of time. And now it’s falling apart.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 20, 2013
“We’re Done Getting Mugged”: Hey Republicans, Obamacare Is Off The Table!
There’s an increasingly obvious problem with the efforts of GOP congressional leaders to tamp down “base” support for a “defunding Obamacare” drive linked to a continuing resolution to keep the federal government operating this fall: they’re talking about other measures to cripple Obamacare–e.g., a delay in key provisions like the individual mandate–perhaps linked to other “hostages” like the debit limit, instead of talking about using whatever leverage they have to achieve other Republican objectives.
On Wednesday I compared these leaders to a parent trying to bribe an unruly child demanding ice cream with a double scoop sometime later. But what if ice cream production has come to a halt? Can the kids be talked into gorging themselves on some other kind of sugary treat?
I don’t know, but at Salon, the exceptionally well plugged-in Brian Beutler thinks it’s time for Republicans to stop talking about ice cream:
Even in the dour days of 2011, when Dems were defeated, morose, and willing to negotiate away almost anything, major provisions of Obamacare were off the table. In 2013, almost everything is off the table. They’re done getting mugged by the GOP. Funding the government and increasing the debt limit are fundamental responsibilities of Congress, and Republicans won’t get more than a couple fig leafs for marshalling enough votes to accomplish them….
I can imagine Democrats putting something genuinely marginal to the ACA on the table. Like I said, a fig leaf. But not the individual mandate. Getting many people into the insurance exchanges, and particularly young healthy people, is crucial to the law’s success, and the mandate is the only stick they have (and it’s a pretty flimsy one) to prod them in there. Everything else is carrots. It’s conceivable to me that the inducements, and the national enrollment outreach effort, will be successful enough on their own to render the mandate ancillary in 2014. But postponing it is too big of a risk.
Republicans should know this. I think GOP leaders do know it, and for the sake of stability and a calming autumn, I sure hope they do. If they don’t, they’ll blunder into these discussions completely blind to how empty they’re about to come up. They’ll feel like they got rolled, when in reality they’ll have simply been mistaken about the terms of the negotiation. And that’s the only way I can imagine these crazed theatrics transforming into a genuine crisis.
If, of course, GOP leaders talk their firebrands out of a frontal assault on Obamacare that they really, really want to undertake on grounds that it’s more realistic to pursue delays that Democrats won’t agree to under any circumstances, then the consequences will go beyond a turbulent autumn in Washington. The GOP congressional leadership really will suffer a massive loss of grassroots conservative confidence, and you could be looking at a national party unmistakably under the heel of Ted Cruz.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 16, 2013
“The Eve Of Destruction”: Behind The GOP Curtain, The Year That Has Been, The Year That Is About To Be
It is almost impossible to find an establishment Republican in town who’s not downright morose about the 2013 that has been and is about to be. Most dance around it in public, but they see this year as a disaster in the making, even if most elected Republicans don’t know it or admit it.
Several influential Republicans told us the party is actually in a worse place than it was Nov. 7, the day after the disastrous election. This is their case:
The party is hurting itself even more with the very voters they need to start winning back: Hispanics, blacks, gays, women and swing voters of all stripes.
The few Republicans who stood up and tried to move the party ahead were swatted into submission: Speaker John Boehner on fiscal matters and Sen. Marco Rubio on immigration are the poster boys for this.
Republicans are all flirting with a fall that could see influential party voices threatening to default on the debt or shut down the government — and therefore ending all hopes of proving they are not insane when it comes to governance.
These Republicans came into the year exceptionally hopeful the party would finally wise up and put immigration and irresponsible rhetoric and governing behind them. Instead, Republicans dug a deeper hole. This probably doesn’t matter for 2014, because off-year elections are notoriously low-turnout affairs where older whites show up in disproportionate numbers. But elite Republican strategists and donors tell us they are increasingly worried the past nine months make 2016 look very bleak — unless elected GOP officials in Washington change course, and fast.
The blown opportunities and self-inflected wounds are adding up:
Hispanics. Nearly every Republican who stumbled away from 2012 promised to quit alienating the fastest-growing demographic in American politics. So what have they done since? Alienated Hispanic voters — again.
It is easy to dismiss as anomaly some of the nasty rhetoric — such as Rep. Don Young calling immigrants “wetbacks” or Rep. Steve King suggesting the children of illegal immigrants are being used as drug mules. But it’s impossible for most Hispanics not to walk away from the immigration debate believing the vast majority of elected Republicans are against a pathway to citizenship.
House Republicans are dragging their feet on immigration reform — a measure that most Republican leaders agree is essential to getting back in the game with Hispanic voters before the next presidential election. House leaders say there’s no chance they’ll bring up the broad measure that has passed the Senate. Instead, they plan a piecemeal, one-bill-a-month approach that is likely to suffocate comprehensive reform.
Some Republicans are praying that leaders will find a way to jam through something President Barack Obama can sign. But current signs point to failure. The House will be tied up all fall over fiscal issues — and there’s unlikely to be time to litigate immigration reform even if most members want to, which they don’t.
“If Republicans don’t pass immigration reform, it’ll be a black cloud that’ll follow the party around through the next presidential election and possibly through the decade,” warned Scott Reed, senior political strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
African Americans. Republicans hurt themselves with other minorities by responding lamely — and, in some cases, offensively — to the Trayvon Martin case, and to the Supreme Court ruling that gutted Voting Rights Act protections.
“You can perform an autopsy until you’re blue in the face,” said Michael Steele, the former Republican National Committee chairman, now with Purple Nation Solutions. “But if the people you’re trying to reach have no faith or trust in the words you are saying, it doesn’t matter.”
It would be easy to dismiss Steele as bitter because he was forced out of the RNC and has feuded with his successor, Reince Priebus, since. But he has done something few Republicans have: risen to the top of American politics as a black Republican. On voting rights, Steele said, the party needs to actively deal with African-American complaints about voter suppression and impediments to voters’ registration. “We need to be saying: ‘We respect, yes, the rule of law. But we also respect your constitutional right to vote,’” he said. “We just can’t sit back and rely on, ‘Oh, gee, you know, we freed the slaves.’”
Steele was even more incensed about Republican reaction to the Martin case. “What African-Americans heard was insensitive,” he said. “Republicans gave a very sterile or pro forma response. There was no sense of even expressing regret or remorse to Trayvon’s mother.”
Republicans tell us privately that pressure from conservative media only encourages their public voices to say things that offend black audiences.
Gays. Polls show the Republicans’ traditional view is rapidly becoming a minority view in politics, but the party has done nothing this year to make itself more appealing to persuadable gay voters.
“We come off like we’re angry and frustrated that more of our fellow Americans aren’t angry and frustrated,” said a senior Mitt Romney campaign official who asked not to be named.
Republicans did show progress in the form of restraint, with many leaders offering a muted reaction to a pair of Supreme Court rulings related to same-sex marriage. In the past, many would have taken to the airwaves to condemn what they see as the crumbling culture around them. A number of top Republicans are counseling a more libertarian approach, letting people live their lives and letting states, or better the church, set the rules for marriage at the local level.
Swing voters. Republicans are in jeopardy of convincing voters they simply cannot govern. Their favorable ratings are terrible and getting worse. But there is broad concern it could go from worse to an unmitigated disaster this fall. Most urgently, according to a slew of key Republicans we interviewed, conservative GOP senators have got to give up their insistence that the party allow the government to shut down after Sept. 30 if they don’t get their way on defunding Obamacare.
The quixotic drive — led by Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — is part of Rubio’s effort to make up with the conservative base after he was stunned by the backlash over his deal-making on immigration. Pollsters say the funding fight makes Republicans look even more obstructionist and causes voters to worry about the effect a shutdown would have on their own finances.
Whit Ayres of North Star Opinion Research, who has been drilling down on this issue for the conservative public-opinion group Resurgent Republic, said: “Shutting down the government is the one way that Republicans can turn Obamacare from a political advantage to a political disadvantage in 2014.”
By: Jim Vandehi and Mike Allen, Politico, August 16, 2013
“Mitch McConnell Digs A Hole, Falls In”: Frankenstein Has Found That His Monster Is Running Out Of Control
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) talked to a local reporter this week about the Affordable Care Act, which he described as the “single worst piece of legislation passed in the last 50 years in the country.” The Republican senator restated his position that “we need to get rid of” the law.
But McConnell also made an off-hand comment that seemed wholly uninteresting at the time: “I mean, there are a handful of things in the 2,700 page bill that probably are OK, but that doesn’t warrant a 2,700 page takeover of all American health care.”
In 2013, with the right’s hysteria over health care seemingly getting worse, the comments are apparently controversial.
In an ordinary political environment, McConnell’s remarks would hardly be newsworthy…. But the political environment surrounding Obamacare is anything but ordinary — with the ferocious Republican assault on the bill, the party’s exaggerated warnings that it will ruin American freedom, and the base’s determination to scrap every last bit of it. So McConnell’s remarks quickly became fodder for his conservative primary challenger, Matt Bevin, who accused the GOP leader’s of “flip-flop[ping] on repealing Obamacare in its entirety.”
“We have to do whatever it takes to repeal Obamacare, and if we can’t repeal it, we have a responsibility to the American people to defund it,” Bevin said in a statement Thursday, responding to McConnell’s remarks. “If Mitch McConnell had ever worked in the private sector, he might understand that. If Senator McConnell is not willing to act to end Obamacare, he needs to get out of the way.”
So let me get this straight. For reasons that have never really made any sense, McConnell described “Obamacare” as the “single worst piece of legislation passed in the last 50 years in the country.” He vowed to “get rid of” the law. He condemned it (falsely) as a “takeover of all American health care.”
And for some Republicans, this position is too moderate and accommodating.
This is silly, but let’s not overlook the larger context: McConnell helped create this mess in the first place. If he’s annoyed by the inflexibility, the senator has no one to blame but himself.
I imagine McConnell was probably trying to offer himself a little general-election cover by saying “there are a handful of things in the 2,700 page bill that probably are OK.” The more the senator says he wants to destroy the entirety of the law — every letter of every page, no matter how effective or popular the idea — the more vulnerable he is to criticisms from the American mainstream.
Would McConnell take coverage away from young adults who can now stay on their family plans through age 26? Would he scrap protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions? Would he end tax breaks for small businesses? Would he end breaks for seniors on prescription medication? McConnell left himself an out — sure, there are some elements he can tolerate, but he still hates the law.
But McConnell is in a red-state primary fight, and it’s apparently a problem to say anything even remotely supportive of the dreaded “Obamacare.”
Sahil Kapur concluded, “That McConnell is being attacked for his remark illustrates the box Republicans have put themselves in while feeding conservatives’ greatest fears about the Affordable Care Act.” So true. GOP leaders, including McConnell, have to realize that they created this monster — they have spent years telling Republican activists and Republican media that “Obamacare” is a communist/fascist/Nazi takeover that will kill the elderly, destroy capitalism, and quite likely end civilization as we know it.
GOP leaders’ rhetoric has never made a lick of sense — Obamacare is a pretty moderate law, built around mainstream ideas that have traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support — but McConnell and his allies pushed this garbage anyway, in part to keep the Republican base fired up, and in part because it was good for fundraising.
And now Frankenstein has found that his monster is running out of control. Well, Mitch, you probably should have thought of that before.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 15, 2013
“Senate Minority Bystander”: Given The Circumstances, Mitch McConnell Has Earned His New Title
The fight among Republicans over whether to shut down the government in the fall isn’t going away. The Heritage Foundation’s political-activism arm is trying to convince GOP lawmakers that the fallout wouldn’t be that bad; Karl Rove and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sparred this week on Sean Hannity’s radio show over the strategy; and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus are conspicuously contradicting each other.
This is ordinarily the point at which Republican leaders intervene to prevent the intra-party fissures from getting too severe. And for a brief moment yesterday, it looked like that had finally happened.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told a crowd at a health care forum in Kentucky on Tuesday that while he does not like the president’s health care law, shutting down the government over funding it “will not stop” it from existing.
“I’m for stopping Obamacare, but shutting down the government will not stop Obamacare,” McConnell told the audience at Baptist Health Corbin, according to a WYMT-TV reporter at the event.
Good for McConnell. The Kentucky Republican had been content to sit on the sidelines while Republicans tore each other apart on this issue, but yesterday, he finally offered a little straight talk: those who hope to tear down the federal health care system need to realize that shutting down the government will not actually bring them closer to their goal.
This is the sort of leadership that’s been lacking in the GOP in recent weeks, so it was a welcome a development. That is, until McConnell quickly announced he didn’t really mean it.
As news of McConnell’s comments made the rounds yesterday afternoon, the senator’s office confirmed to Greg Sargent that McConnell “did not take sides in the dispute over whether to stage a shutdown confrontation.”
And as it turns out, the office was telling the truth — a local station aired the interview with McConnell, and while he noted that a shutdown would not stop implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the senator did not take the next step of endorsing one strategy or another.
In other words, McConnell realizes that shutting down the government won’t stop “Obamacare,” but he thinks a shutdown may be worth doing anyway. Or maybe not. He doesn’t want to say.
Let’s not brush past the larger context. Soon after McConnell seemed to reject his party’s ridiculous (and probably suicidal) shutdown scheme, McConnell’s office was eager — desperate, even — to assure everyone that the Senate Leader was not, in any way, demonstrating any kind of leadership, or stating an opinion in public. He’s aware of the major dispute among his own followers, but McConnell wants one thing to be perfectly clear: he’s ready to let this division continue, without so much as taking a side.
Maybe he needs a new title. Senate Minority Bystander seems more appropriate under the circumstances.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 14, 2013
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