By Matt Holdridge
Former Bush speechwriter, David Frum, calls the healthcare bill’s passage the most crushing legislative defeat for conservatives and Republicans since the 1960s. Read the rest here.
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.
…We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
While I don’t agree with Frum’s general analysis on much of anything, what would have been his approach? More incremental government take-over followed by disingenuous rhetoric about how we’re, “reforming health care using the free market?” That was the Bush approach that helped give us left-leaning majorities in both houses plus the lose of the White House.
I don’t know if Frum wrote Bush’s line about abandoning the free market to save it, but that seems to be his strategy.
He goes on:
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.
What does this say about his type of “traditional Republican ideas?”
David Frum doesn’t seem to believe that sometimes it is more noble to go down in defeat then to sell your soul.
Frum might be correct on one front. If we don’t apply the proper pressure on any new majorities in Congress or properly convince our neighbors, there is no chance for the bill to be repealed.
No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed.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?
Now is not the time to back down!