Waterloo
by David Frum <http://www.frumforum.com/davidfrum>
Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing
legislative defeat since the 1960s.
It's hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives
may cheer themselves that they'll compensate for today's
expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:
(1) It's a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about
November by then the economy will have improved and the immediate
goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.
(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is
forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle
now.
So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the
hard lesson:
A huge part of the blame for today's disaster attaches to
conservatives and Republicans ourselves.
At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike,
say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut,
we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no
compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be
Obama's Waterloo just as healthcare was Clinton's in 1994.
Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with
53% of the vote, not Clinton's 42%. The liberal block within the
Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in
1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and
also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.
This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.
Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap
between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The
Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney's
Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage
Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican
counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.
Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have
leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative
views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive
enterprise without weighing so heavily on small business
without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.
No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans
scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we
muster to re-open the "doughnut hole" and charge seniors more
for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind
policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to
banish 25 year olds from their parents' insurance coverage? And even
if the votes were there would President Obama sign such a repeal?
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and
they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But
they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had
whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making
was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to
murder your grandmother? Or more exactly with somebody whom
your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their
grandmother?
I've been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our
overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters but by
mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information,
overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent
and elected leaders to lead.
The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different
imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on
confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted
President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own
interests.
What he omitted to say but what is equally true is that he
also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed if they
govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out
of office Rush's listeners get less angry. And if they are
less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for
Sleepnumber beds.
So today's defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is
a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners
and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even
more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on
television and radio.
For them, it's mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to
represent, it's Waterloo all right: ours.
http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo
Cry me a river, David... -jrm
