In the Annals of Always Doing the Right Thing, I examined the possibility that a collapse of Obamacare prior to Senate passage, and the substitution of “incremental, bipartisan reforms” would represent a typically American step on the way to exhausting all other possibilities before finally getting around to something sensible and necessary.
Now that the public option and Medicare buy-in provisions seem to have been permanently struck from the Senate Health bill, the final obstacles to passage of something-anything have been reduced – though not eliminated, whatever the latest handicapping via the Fox News All-Stars. With no Gang of N senators having appeared demanding a different something-anything, just somewhat slightly sane, with the Republicans finally trotting out their last resorts, it will be tempting to give in to despair.
Wrong – the hard thing for a conservative should be maintaining appropriate levels of outrage while restraining the urge to laugh one’s conservative head off.
Purely from a political standpoint, this should be a time for celebration – watching the worst political leadership combine in modern, perhaps in all American history joining hands and leaping off the President’s “precipice.” If ever there was a time for “the worse, the better” rightwing Leninism, this may be it. Or, for those who prefer their references more pop culture-y, there’s always Dirty Harry (if it was good enough for Ronald Reagan, it’s good enough for me):
Allahpundit ties together several strands, then sums things up succinctly in a message to the Dems (if not quite as succinctly as Massachusetts Dem Michael Capuano): “Good luck in those midterms, champ.” William Kristol, whose idea inspired the earlier post on politically sane alternatives, provides a political play call – noting that Obamacare’s three main beneficiaries are Big Pharma, Big Government, and Big Insurance, while urging the Republicans to argue “1,000 times no”:
…if the legislation passes, the GOP should immediately begin trying to repeal key parts of it. The moment it passes, Mitch McConnell might introduce free-standing legislation repealing the Medicare cuts. Republicans could highlight their opposition to Big Pharma and Big Insurance by trying to force votes–in 2010–on drug re-importation and more insurance competition, measures that could go into effect right away so as to be of immediate benefit to the American people. And of course they should promise to relieve the American people of the prospect of living under the Democrats’ health bureaucracy regime by promising repeal of the whole thing in 2011.
Jay Cost, an observer not usually given to any form of melodrama, puts things more emotively:
When the people catch wind of the full scope of this bill, and they will, there will be hell to pay. The public has been known to vote against big business and big government. Somehow, this compromised bill manages to deliver both – big government and big business, joined together, with the little guy forced to participate.
If the Democrats pass this bill, the Republicans will pound them relentlessly and mercilessly in next year’s midterm campaign. All across the country right now, would-be Republican candidates can sense that this is their chance finally to get into Congress. They’re already starting to toss their hats into the ring. Many more will follow because they know what the public thinks of this. They know that they’ll find plenty of donors to bankroll those ads talking about the individual mandate, the insurance company giveaways funded by Medicare cuts, the victory for special interests, and how it all happened behind closed doors. And they know what kind of effect these ads are going to have.
Democrats were bound to lose seats next year because it is a midterm and they’re in charge. They were bound to lose extra seats because it’s a recession. But if they pass this bill, God help them. The people sure as hell won’t.
Peter Wehner thinks it will stick:
[T]his process has been so bad, the products it has produced so defective, and the potential ramifications so destructive that, if the president signs health-care legislation into law, he will — with the stroke of his pen — provide Republicans with a golden opportunity to return to power. He is, in fact, in the process of setting the stage for a realignment of some significance. Repealing and replacing the monstrosity that Democrats call health-care reform will, absent some totally unforeseen events, become the dominant issue for the 2010 elections. And Democrats will, I think, pay a huge political price for what they are championing.
Barack Obama is turning out to be a very significant political figure, but not quite in the way he imagined. Ronald Reagan gave rise to a rebirth of conservatism and the GOP. So might Barack Obama.
The fiscal reckoning to come will require much more from us and our political system than merely avoiding the Obamacrats’ mistakes, but they have provided the negative blueprint for how to proceed to that hard business, and much of the material for construction – even if the Dems do themselves a favor and scrap this bill at the 11th hour. Do the systematic opposite of what they’ve been doing. It could serve conservatives practically for a generation.
Okay – now feel free to go back to your wailing and gnashing – just don’t let anyone catch you winking at your friends.
Comments 23
That Ronald Reagan, ah, so good, so smart, so right about Medicare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FzNTB1qtFA
Always good for a giggle.
December 16th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
How reassuring. If the lefties succeed in forever ruining one sixth of the economy and in the process setting up hundreds of thousands of everlasting no work “jobs” for their supporters they will suffer at the polls.
I’m ecstatic. I think I’ll drink a couple of those fifths of bourbon I have in the cabinet for Christmas Eve.
December 16th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
@ Sully:
Good wailing and gnashing, but nothing is forever. Zombiecare doesn’t even go into effect until 2013. The bill is a hopeless mess, and even those backing it are doing so with the assumption that it will need to be revised. If Cost, Wehner, and others are right, it won’t be the liberals doing the “revising.”
December 16th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Oh – and 1/5th of the economy is a big problem, but, in case you haven’t noticed, 5/5ths of our economy is at risk under current circumstances. Zombiecare just moves the date for the reckoning closer, while increasing the odds that those handling it are the Obamacrats’ opponents.
(Unless it’s already too late… in which case, what difference doe any of it make?)
December 16th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
“Purely from a political standpoint, this should be a time for celebration – watching the worst political leadership combine in modern, perhaps in all American history joining hands and leaping off the President’s “precipice.”
Let’s not forget about the attempt to privatize Social Security,and try to imagine if that had succeded.
December 16th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
@ Rex Caruthers:
Why then that Socialist Security system would have been looted and safe from all those greedy ol’ redistributionists.
Dyer could call it a triumph of liberation from soul-crushing dependency and a chance to savor the best in free-market cat food.
December 16th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Dyer could call it a triumph of liberation from soul-crushing dependency and a chance to savor the best in free-market cat food.
Cat food is good for you;it gives you nine lives.
America workplace is becoming as soul crushing as the soviet system was. But, if you hate your job,you can easily get another one,or even start your own business. Good Luck Comrade.
December 16th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
@ fuster:
That’s based 100% or so on propaganda about what Bush was actually proposing. Can you point to an honest and informed analysis of what difference it would have made had the Bush-proposed measures been in place when the squall hit? My guesstimate: Not much.
December 16th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/yes-bush-tried-to-destroy-social-security/
December 16th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
links to krugman anything don’t count, aka tk;dr (too krugman, didn’t read)
December 16th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
My Tsar, with all due respect (and even an extra penny),
anytime you wanna post something that quotes Peter Wehner, you don’t get a Krugman escape clause.
You’ll have to bite the bullet on that one until you gimme an economist saying that Krugman’s wrong.
I’d prefer someone not from Liberty University, Utah, or Oklahoma.
December 16th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
@ fuster:
Maybe, except I quote Wehner as one voice of several in support of a larger thesis. You link Krugman supposedly in support of an off-topic argument, and in response to a request for a fair assessment of what effect the Bush measures would have had by now, presumably in relation to the economic crisis of last year. Now that I’ve look at the link (thankfully short it was), it had zero to do with the question, but was just an un-evidenced claim that Bush’s proposal would have led to the destruction of Social Security.
December 16th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Expert testimony, your Tsarship.
Exactly to the point, off-topic as it was.
You asked, you received.
December 16th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
@ fuster:
Actually, what you linked was Krugman vouching for his own opinion, which in the Krugmaniverse probably counts as support, but, again, has little even to do with the off-topic topic as defined. Furdermore, my reply was to your defense of Krugmanicization as fair play contra Wehner. I submit that subordinate Wehnery cannot ever excuse arbitrary Krugmanity – never, never, never and for shame.
December 16th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
nice.
but you still have to sit for the point that Rex made about Social Security privatization.
December 16th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
@ fuster Not sure what sitting for the point would mean, but I did argue quite directly that the real privatization proposals – which were quite conservative in structure, requirements, incentives, phase-ins – wouldn’t have made for much of a difference. I have little doubt that a proponent could come up with an argument for why they’d have been beneficial, both in re the crisis of 2008 and the coming fiscal crunches.
December 16th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
CK,
Any discussion of Social Security has to incorporate the fact that every administration ripped off SS revenues leaving in their wake IOUs degraded by inflation,never to be paid back anyway.
December 16th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
@ Rex Caruthers:
Well then how could you destroy something that was already destroyed? What unique harm would privatization have done?
December 16th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
What unique harm would privatization have done?
It would have forced the Fed to create several more additional Trillions in debt over the next decade,to keep the payouts in line for the Boomers,politicians don’t f–k with 70M crazed BBs.
December 16th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
AS opposed to what alternative, now, we’ll be likely if the collapse is as mild as the Russians in 1991-1993
December 16th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
@ Rex Caruthers:
I don’t see why that follows necessarily. Where do the actual privatization proposals, or for that matter complete privatization – kind of a fantasy – lead to what you describe. Please show your work.
December 16th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
As long as Social Security lasts long enough for me to get mine for a dozen or so years. A couple dozen years would be better, but I’m not counting on that.
Apres Moi, Le Deluge
I need more bourbon
December 16th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
@ Sully:
Think you meant
Dans moi, Le Deluge du whiskey Bourbon
December 16th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Trackbacks & Pingbacks 5
[...] cross-posted at Zombie Contentions [...]
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[...] intended to devastate the souls of all foolish enough to click), blogger Instapunk has used my “Go Ahead, Make Our Decade” post (also at the Green Room here) as a prime example of “Polyanna Syndrome” among [...]
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