Bush speechwriter: Health care defeat is our fault and our Waterloo

Former Bush 43 speechwriter David Frum takes a hard, fair and sobering look at today's expected passage of President Obama's health care reform.

Several admissions:
1) This is a Waterloo alright, for Republicans.

2) This will not be repealed. How do you take away some of these things (pre-existing conditions, kids staying on your insurance) from voters?

3) In reality, this bill is not much different from Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health care.

4) The Fox/Limbaugh noise machine, and the Palin-led lies made it impossible for Republicans to cut a deal. How do you cut a deal with someone that wants to kill your grandmother? In going all-in, Obama wins everything.

5) The Noise Machine is in it for their own ratings, which, with passage of this bill and the flames of anger they fan will ensure high ratings.

David Frum

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.

...
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.

...
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.

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.

RNC Website FAIL!

(Bob Cesca)
The Republicans relaunched their new and super-buggy website today and it's hilariously awful.

It's nearly impossible to click anywhere beyond the front page. There's actually not much of anything above the fold, and below the fold there's a "Republican Heroes" banner that appears to be ballyhooing someone named Pickney Pinchback. No offense to Mr. Pinchback, but nothing says "new and exciting" like a guy from the 19th century named "Pickney Pinchback."

Some other observations from Ambinder:

- In a section devoted to "future leaders," there were none.

- The last GOP accomplishment cited on the accomplishment page was from 2004.

- Administrator passwords were accidentally posted.

- The first question on the conference call was from an Hispanic Republican who asked why the GOP site didn't have a Spanish-language page and noted that the White House had one.

Oh, and when the accomplishments page finally loaded for me, this was the actual logo at the top of the page:



Is that really the face you want replacing the "O" in your logo? The Ardipithecus?

Anti-government protester injured at protest, has no insurance and can't pay bills

(Wampeters, Foma, and Pat Falloon)
I like my irony served ironic-as-hell, thank you.

St. Louis - Protesters are demanding justice for a man who was injured during fighting that erupted last week when audience members at a St. Louis-area aging forum began yelling about health care reform.

Backers of Kenneth Gladney, 38, of St. Louis, gathered Saturday at the offices of the Service Employees International Union for an event organized by the pro-limited government Tea Party coalition.

The group claims union members attacked the politically conservative Gladney at the event two days earlier. But members of the union, which supports the president’s health care plan, say Gladney initiated the fight.

On Saturday, Gladney sat in a wheelchair, his knee bandaged, holding a flag that read: “Don’t Tread on Me.” Others who gathered at the union offices held signs with a slightly different version of the message: “Don’t Tread on Kenny.”

Brown told the crowd that Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was laid off recently and has no health insurance.

2 thoughts:

1) “Don’t Tread on Kenny.” Priceless.

2) He was injured protesting health insurance for everyone and can't pay because he DOESN'T HAVE INSURANCE.

SELF-INTEREST FAIL.

Rush is a traitor. Really

On Friday, Rush Limbaugh was - again - wishing for the recovery bill to fail:

"I want everything he's doing to fail... I want the stimulus package to fail.... I do not want this to succeed."

Steve Benen of Washington Monthly points out that if, in 2003, a Democrat - or anyone - expressed a similar sentiment about the war on terror, they would lose all credibility, allies, advertising revenue or jobs they held. And rightly so.

But in the hypocritical world of GOP politics, they sit by while FatBoy hammers at America. Read what he said - he hopes the recovery fails. He's willing to see this nation go down the drain so Obama doesn't get credit, and votes, for savin our economy.

Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat traitor.

From Benen:

Limbaugh is, without ambiguity, rooting for failure. In the midst of an economic crisis, Limbaugh quite openly admitted that if Obama's economic policies are successful, it would undermine the talk-show host's worldview. As such, Limbaugh wants desperately to see more Americans suffer, more workers unemployed, more businesses close up shop. The key here is philosophy -- if government spending can stimulate the economy, as it always does, then the right is wrong. Limbaugh would much prefer a suffering nation than a reevaluation of conservative ideas.

Keep in mind, of course, that such talk under Bush's presidency would force someone from the airwaves. If a prominent progressive figure said, just as the president was sending troops into war in early 2003, "I want everything he's doing to fail. I want the war in Iraq to fail. I do not want the president's national security agenda to succeed," he or she would lose all advertising revenue and be fired. In the midst of a crisis, Americans rooting against America, based on nothing but ideological rigidity, are pariahs.

Obama on the recovery bill

From the Department of Enegry:
"So let me be clear: [Republican] ideas have been tested, and they have failed. They've taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, and they've brought our economy to a halt. And that's precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action."
-Barack Obama

"Yes sir."
- Me

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