Mickey Kaus is reporting that a Brown victory in the Massachusetts Senate race may not necessarily kill the healthcare bill. If the house passes the current Senate bill as-is, there will be no need for a conference. A tricky move indeed but we’ll have to wait and see the outcome of the election for the Democrats to make their choice.
Tag republican
One of These Things…
…is not like the other. The Atlantic had people vote on Best Republican and Best Democratic scandals of the decade. All of them were sort of personal/morality issues, with the striking example of the GOP winner:
Results: the Abramoff investigaion, 47%;
Compare this with the scope of the top Democratic scandal:
Results: John Edwards’ affair with Reille Hunter, 45%;
Who Wins In Healthcare Reform?
Pending some major catastrophe a la Mr. Karl Rove circa 2006 (Wait, nevermind…), the Senate healthcare reform bill will pass in the Senate in the the next few days. Some liberals are for it, some liberals are skeptical but, when passed, they will have an achieved something that has eluded our government for over sixty years. From a political standpoint, this bill is very unique. It’s gigantic–$871 Billion–and will be passed along party lines. As Megan McCardle points out, this has never happened before. So which party wins more political cache?
On one hand, there are the Republicans who have said no since the summer, refusing to do anything but obstruct. On the other, are the Democrats who have chosen to go the road alone and ended up with a bill that few are happy with. In the short term, it will be easy to frame this bill in the midterm elections as a massive expansion of government with little foreseeable benefits. Democrats will surely lose some seats for this. Luckily, it seems unlikely that Republicans will get a supermajority in the Senate.
In the long run, this legislation will probably just make people angry and entrenched. The changes won’t fully go into effect for a few years and I imagine this will be a campaign platform for a few years after that. In short, it’s messy. Nobody wins outright, but I guess that’s politics.
Lieberman Flip Flops, Tries To Murder Senate Health Care Bill
Smooth one Senator Lieberman. They’re on to you though, a lot of them…
- Matthew Yglesias: Lieberman Hearts Medicare Buy-In
- Think Progress: Lieberman Last Week: ‘I Don’t Know How Anybody Can Decide Until You See The Actual Language’
- Andrew Sullivan: Lieberman sticks the shiv in
- The Atlantic Politics Channel: Why Lieberman Hates The Health Care Bill
- Ezra Klein: Joe Lieberman: Let’s not make a deal!
- Firedoglake: Video Surfaces Of Lieberman Supporting Medicare Buy-In Just Three Months Ago
- Talking Points Memo: How To Deal With Joe
- Crooks and Liars: This Is What It Comes Down To: Lieberman Is A Spiteful Little Toad Who Will Kill Health-Care Reform.
Conservatives have opinions too:
- The Corner: McCain Defends Lieberman
- R. S. McCain: The Left vs. Lieberman: ‘By Any Means Necessary’
- Hot Air: Lieberman: No cloture on Reid package
Also, Hot Air is reporting that Lieberman won and the Medicare buy-in that Sen. Lieberman opposed has been dropped.
Steele: That’s Not Creating Jobs
GOP Chairman Michael Steele made an odd retort on This Week With George Stephanopoulos when Virginia governor Tim Kaine said that there were projects in Virginia that have been funded by stimulus money.
More On The Republican Party
Ezra Klein see’s two possible outcomes of what I deemed post-partisanship:
On the one hand, this could be the beginning of a split between the Tea Party/Glen Beck/Rush Limbaugh types and the Republican Party itself. On the other hand — and this seems more likely — it could persuade the Republican Party to support extremely conservative candidates, leaving them with weaker candidates come the 2010 general election.
Post-Partisanship On The Right?
Immediately following the election of Barack Obama just under a year ago, there was a great deal of talk about “bi-partisanship” or the more honorable “post-partisanship”. In building his cabinet, Obama gathered experts with a wide diversity of opinions with little regard for political party. The term “post-partisanship” has since become kind of a point of mockery among conservative pundits. Who knew that the Republican party would be the one forced to deal with post-partisan problems, not with moderates as Obama supporters were looking for but with the ideological right?
One of the reasons for success for conservatives in the past has been the ability to accept center-right members into a coalition with the farther-right. This does not appear to be the case anymore. The NY-23 race is shaping up to be a showdown between different grades of conservatism. With newly energized conservative activists, there is no need for a large political party or to include moderate donors because the money is coming from elsewhere. For one, Fox News’ coverage has definitely moved away from a flailing Republican party. Example: Glenn Beck. He’s angry at anybody that disagrees with his view of the world, regardless of party affiliation. He has also managed to orchestrate a number of respectable crowds at his 9/12 tea party protests.
This will not end well for the Republicans or the conservative movement as a whole. Opinion polls put Republican’s support at dismal levels just a year before the midterm elections. With their current direction, Republicans look to be headed toward self-immolation.
Republicans: Shooting Themselves In The Foot?
New York’s 23rd district is shaping up to have quite a fight over who should represent them from the right and will probably have some massive implications for the Republican party as a whole. The relevant candidates: Dede Scozzafava, the Republican, and Doug Hofmann, the Conservative. The instigators: conservative Internet activists. The inevitable outcome: a fractured and still weaker conservative movement.
The conservative movement has, at least for the last ten years, had difficulty coming to grips with any sort of dissent in their ranks. Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan advisor, became a famous pariah in the movement during the years of George W. Bush because of his criticism. The newest is former house speaker Newt Gingrich, who has come out in support of the moderate Scozzafava and apparently dashed all hopes of running for president in 2012.
Republicans and Compromise
Now that Baucus’ healthcare bill has passed out of committee, it seems that Republican’s are beginning to realize that obstructionism isn’t going to work. The Democrats, of course, do not need to compromise for their bill to pass, but creating a fully bipartisan bill would be good politics for both parties.
From the beginning, Republicans have been clamoring for medical malpractice reform since the beginning of this battle, and the Congressional Budget Office has said that it will save $11 billion annually. If this is true, then why aren’t the Democrats even acknowledging this as a viable possibility? First, trial lawyers (who have a vested stake in not having tort reform) are major Democratic donors. On a website launched by the American Association for Justice, the lawyer lobby appeals to the morality of the average person in an attempt to turn the public off of the idea of tort reform. The fact that the same organization is deeply in debt does not help their case, however. No matter, the Democrats are still beholden to the hands that fed them into office, and, unless anything radically changes, it will likely stay that way.
On the other hand, maybe this is just obstructionism in disguise. Maybe Enzi has craftily changed his rhetoric after realizing that he is waging an uphill battle. In the middle of August, Moe Lane posted something on RedState that has stuck with me for the past two months:
The Democrats can pass something whenever they like: they have the votes, after all. We’re not going to pretend that they need our help. We’re certainly not going to pretend that they want our input, either. All they want is the ability to share the blame.
This is the feeling that I get from the Republicans, even now.