Obamacare: Why The Fuss?
Why do the Republicans care quite so much about blocking Obamacare? I am not saying that healthcare doesn’t matter. Of course it does. But don’t jobs matter? Doesn’t a manufacturing base? Doesn’t controlling immigration? Doesn’t America as an English-speaking country? Doesn’t a strong defense capability used strictly for its proper defensive purpose? Doesn’t restricting or reducing abortion? Doesn’t marriage as only ever the union of one man and one woman? Come to that, doesn’t winning elections?
But the Republicans have sold out completely on trade, on immigration, on the status of English, and on foreign policy, even though there was plenty of room for working across the aisle on those issues. Just as there was on restricting or, especially, reducing abortion, on which they have done nothing. And just as there was on defending traditional marriage, on which they have done nothing much, leaving it to core Democratic black clergy to deliver the goods. So now they have to bet the farm on the only thing they have left, defeating a healthcare proposal that could have been drafted and agreed on a cross-party basis, and which is going to pass anyway, not least with the very strong support of those pro-life, pro-family black clergy. The Republicans are reduced to ranting about ridiculous “death panels”, about federal funding of abortion and repeal of the conscience clauses (like they themselves have ever done anything about abortion), and about coverage for illegal immigrants (whom they themselves actively encourage), none of which was ever going to happen.
The Republicans could have had trade controls, immigration restrictions, protections of English, foreign policy realism, abortion reduction measures, and defenses of traditional marriage, as the price of public healthcare. Democrats have to answer to their black and their blue-collar white voters, who would have demanded to know why healthcare was prevented at all, never mind for the sake of not doing what they see as these eminently sensible things. Facing their own electorates, Republicans could have asked why universal public healthcare, to which those voters would rapidly have grown more than used, was too high a price for these much more significant and fundamental victories. Victories for principles held broadly or strongly by numerous Democrats, including Obama. But not, these days, by the Republican Party. And that, alas, is the point.
The rural and Western half of the Republican Party supported the New Deal. Congressional Republicans cast the votes that passed Civil Rights. Their party historically and rightly viewed the wider world in strictly realistic terms, “not seeking for monsters to destroy”. Republicans had called on Europe to revert to pre-1914 borders and thus end the First World War, an outcome which would have precluded both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Theirs was the party of Eisenhower, with his ending of the Korean War, his even-handed approach to Israel and the Palestinians, and his denunciation of the military-industrial complex. Of Nixon, who began détente with China, and who with Ford ended the Vietnam War. Of Reagan’s initiation of nuclear arms reduction. Of opposition to Clinton’s unpatriotic job-exportation, unpatriotic sweatshop-importation, and unpatriotic global trigger-happiness, all continued and expanded by the unpatriotic Bush Administration. Yet still of Bush’s withdrawal of American troops from Saudi Arabia after 9/11, in consequence of which there has been no further attack on American soil.
But where is it now?
It is all very, very sad. And it is also a shameful abrogation of responsibility, since it makes the Republican Party so absurd that it effectively turns America into a one-party state.
David, you’re not even worth a serious reply. If the market weren’t so good at marginalizing ranting freaks like you, I’d advocate censorship.
“marginalizing ranting freaks”
Physician heal thyself in what little remains of the GOP.
You are now going to get public healthcare. You knew you would. After all, the Dems won the Congressional and Presidential Elections. And GOP voters will in any case rapidly come to love it, simply because that is what always happens with these things.
The Democratic fixation on this issue and on bipatisanship in relation to it is so intense that you could pretty much have named your price. But instead, you are not going to get anything in return: trade controls, immigration restrictions, protections of English, foreign policy realism, abortion reduction measures, defenses of traditional marriage. Why not? Because you (not necessarily you personally, but the GOP) never asked for them. And why didn’t you ask? Because you (not necessarily you personally, but the GOP) no longer believe in them.
So, what *does* the GOP, as such, still believe in? That is a very good question. To which no very good answer presents itself.
Opposition to Obamacare is one issue where the more libertarian, free market wing of the party is on board. Even country club moderate Republicans are concerned about it. And one assumes that social conservatives agree with them.
The issues that you mention have little appeal for free marketeers or well-off moderates. Even the social conservatives aren’t wholly behind your issues. That may be regrettable, but it’s no surprise that Republicans don’t take the kind of stand on immigration or trade or even abortion and marriage that they do on health care.
It’s always been that way, hasn’t it? When you look back to the 1980s or 1960s or the 1930s, the issues that united the GOP most had to do with taxes, not immigration or civil rights or abortion or foreign policy.
David. Are you deluded enough to think that repeating the same column over and over, with the same check list of issues, accomplishes anything? No one who reads TAC expects anything of the GOP. No one. So your boring, repetitive attacks on the GOP establishment, here of all places, is just another example of your failure to understand the American scene.
It is easy to attack the GOP establishment. But why do paleocons need to wait for it?
I’ve a feeling that I have touched a very raw nerve indeed here: look at what you could have had as the price for supporting a healthcare policy with which you may disagree, but which is hardly of the civilizational significance of, say, controlling immigration (a very popular move with the black and the blue-collar white voters in Democratic primaries), or defending the position of English (a very popular move with the black and the blue-collar white voters in Democratic primaries), or discarding liberal interventionism/neoconseravtism (a very popular move with the black and the blue-collar white voters in Democratic primaries, and pretty much where Obama himself is coming from), or defining marriage in traditional terms (a very popular move with the black and the blue-collar white voters in Democratic primaries, not to mention Obama’s own stated view).
But instead, the Republican Party doesn’t believe in any of these things. And you, however you protest to the contrary, still do believe in the Republican Party. If you didn’t, then you would get out. You might actually cross over, like the only Ron Paul supporter nominated for the Senate by either main party last year. Or you might find it more useful to become Independents, and genuinely to speak and act as such. But either way, you would get out of the GOP and really, truly put it behind you. What is stopping you? After all, it has certainly adopted that attitude to you.
Just one more thing for now – the eventual (indeed, rapid) popularity of public healthcare when it comes can be used against the GOP:
“Why were they so against it?”, people will ask.
“Well,” you could reply, “they had given up everything else that they ever stood for, so opposing this was all they had left. We’d have demanded [you know the list], but they couldn’t be bothered.”
“But the Dems would have let you have many of those things, maybe even all of them. They could have told their own dissidents that it had been necessary to get healthcare passed, and they’d have had no answer to that. Those things would then have happened. Along with this, which we know like so much.”
“Well, there you are, then. So much for the Republicans.”
But you really would have to want to replace the GOP once and for all. Do you? Really? Deep down?
Just an observation: the comments on this blog turn into personal attacks pretty quickly. On this post, I believe it was the first comment. Do you know each other? Do you all go to the same school?
If Republicans ever did anything serious about abortion and gay rights, they would have nothing much to campaign on. If they ran on a platform of cutting the highest tax rate and reducing all domestic spending while massive increasing military spending and adventures abroad, I would expect them to take 30-40% at best in national elections.
So long as gay marriage and abortion are still in the air, they have perennial vote-winning issues.
On the other hand, David, I don’t see where *we* are going to get public health care. The proper right-populist position on Obamacare is nuanced opposition.
The end result of any health care reform that the big business-funded *Democrats* will allow to pass probably won’t have any serious public option and will only result in the assumption of liability by the US Govt for the mismanagement of private health insurance companies as well as forcing our healthy and poorly paid young men and women to buy artificially inflated, needless health insurance while illegals still get it for free.
David, public healthcare for the majority is not coming to the US anytime soon.
AL,
I disagree. Certainly more Republicans have a conservative view on many social issues than agree on economic issues. I suggest you review the 2005 Pew Center Political Typology report. A huge proportion of Republican voters are economically “left”.
Of course, they have no voice because elitist Republicans range from big business semi-closed marketeers to free-thinking libertarians and on social issues from liberal to apathetic/opportunistic.
A populist Republican party that stood with the majority on trade and immigration would have theoretically far more support. The theoretically, of course, refers to the problem that the big money would simply go to the Democrats. This was one of Buchanan’s eventual problems in 1996. Firstly, all the relatively stupid conservative voters were told (and mostly obeyed) to vote for the favourite, then even if Buchanan had kept on winning primaries, the RNC (yes along with your beloved Haley Barbour, chairman) was plotting against him.
William P.:
We all know you are a closet-neocon but now we know you are a rude closet-neocon.
The same people who routinely denounce anyone who advocates self-preservation in the face of a suicidal enemy as “murderous” “blood thirsty” or “warmongering” now think I’m rude.
Haha, look, I’m not saying I’m not. But take a glance in the mirror, folks.