by Martin Indyk
Netanyahu sensed a political advantage, and he's pressing it. Martin Indyk, former American ambassador to Israel, explains Netanyahu's remarkable decision to taunt his country's most important ally. What happened to Vice President Biden this week in Jerusalem was egregious but hardly new. Right-wing governments in Israel have regularly embarrassed high-level U.S. officials by making announcements about new settlement activity during or just after their visits. But it usually happens to secretaries of state. It infuriated James Baker, confounded Condoleezza Rice, and appalled Madeleine Albright.
They know they can get away with it.
When I served as Albright's ambassador in Israel, during Bibi Netanyahu's first term as Prime Minister, he announced a major extension to an existing West Bank settlement as she departed Israel after one of her efforts to move the peace process forward. When she heard the news, she called me on an open line and shouted: "You tell Bibi that he needs to stop worrying about his right wing and start worrying about the United States." It was good advice, but it went unheeded. Antagonizing the Clinton administration eventually contributed to Netanyahu's downfall. Israeli voters punished him for mishandling the relationship with Israel's only true ally.
The second time around, one might have expected Netanyahu to be more circumspect about his relations with the Obama administration, especially because Israel is now so dependent on the United States to deal with the growing threat from Iran.
Has it ever not been dependent on the US?
But three developments seem to have emboldened Netanyahu. First, Obama lost the Israeli public by convincing them—through his Cairo speech and customary cool—that he wanted to distance the United States from Israel in order to curry favor with the Arab World. For the first time, Netanyahu found himself in the unusual position of being more popular at home than the U.S. president (Clinton and Bush enjoyed 70-80 percent public approval ratings in Israel).
Second, the Republicans have started making a comeback in Washington, raising the possibility of using Congress to constrain the president. That was something Netanyahu deployed to considerable advantage once Clinton lost control of the House to the Israelis' close friend Newt Gingrich. He probably savors the opportunity to do it again.
Third, Obama purposely delinked the peace process from Iran, making clear to Netanyahu that, despite their deep differences over settlement activity, they would be completely coordinated on the strategic issue of curbing Iran's nuclear program.
So Bibi won by losing, or, simply won another one. He lost nothing.
So my guess is this fortuitous combination generated sloppiness in the prime minister’s office. That's the only way I can explain the humiliation of the vice president of the United States on the very day that he came to Jerusalem to try to persuade the Israeli public, using Biden-esque hyperbole, that the Obama administration really does love them. The excuse that Netanyahu was blind-sided by settler gremlins in the Interior ministry strains credulity. That's because his aides have spent a good deal of time lately reassuring Washington that Israel would avoid provocative actions in Jerusalem that might sabotage the indirect Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that were launched this week.
Now that hard-won, nine-month American effort to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table is in serious jeopardy. If the indirect talks collapse before they even start, Netanyahu will inevitably be blamed. The Palestinians surely sense that they have an opportunity to turn the tables on Israel, so Netanyahu has very little time to get himself out of this self-generated mess.
There is one way to repair the damage to U.S.-Israel relations and to his own standing with the Israeli public. He could immediately declare that in order to boost the chances for negotiations, he is calling a halt to all provocative acts in Jerusalem—including announcements of new building activity in east Jerusalem, housing demolitions, and evictions. He should also establish a mechanism in the prime minister's office to ensure that his decision is implemented. Such actions would both demonstrate his commitment to the negotiations and to repairing the damage to his friendship with Joe Biden and the United States.
Having just explained why PM Netanyahu did not do what the writer is proposing, the writes proposes that the PM do what he has not done. Further: establish a mechanism to make sure his decision is implemented? Isn't that a matter of course, that the government implements the Prime Minister's decisions?
Can't do it because of his right wing? This time Netanyahu should listen to Albright’s counsel.
Why should this time be different than any other time? The Israel lobby in the US is already making noises about the US government ceasing to pressure Israel. Noise from that lobby and its Congressional allies will only get louder.
Martin Indyk is the vice president and director of foreign policy at The Brookings Institution and author of the recently published Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East (Simon & Schuster 2009).
Showing posts with label Republicans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republicans. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Not that easy
February 17, 2010 - Political Memo
G.O.P. Hopes for Senate Control Face Hurdles
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON — The retirement of Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana has raised Republicans’ hopes of capturing a significant number of Democratic Senate seats in November. Some Republicans and analysts are even suggesting that the party might take control of the Senate. In theory, at least, that is possible, given the number of Democratic retirements, soaring public disillusionment with Congress and an unemployment rate that seems unlikely to diminish appreciably before November. But a review of the political map suggests how daunting the Republican task would be, requiring both a continuing barrage of bad luck for Democrats and nothing short of a flawless performance by the Republican Party.
That is a lot to get done all at once; flawless is not an adjective often associated with politicians. But the Democrats seem intent on mucking up everything, and have been doing it consistently.
“As the map stands now, if we run the table of competitive races, we can get there,” said Rob Jesmer, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “We hope to get a few more races in play over the next couple months, which would give us some margin for error.” Democrats control the Senate 59 to 41. Because Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. casts the tie-breaking vote if the Senate is split 50-50, Republicans would need to pick up 10 seats to gain control.
For argument’s sake, factor in the possibility that Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent whom Democrats have counted as one of their own, switches his party affiliation if Republicans are on the verge of taking control, a move that Democrats do not rule out. Then Republicans would have to win every one of the eight Democratic-held seats viewed as vulnerable — in Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.
Republicans can probably put North Dakota in the bank today, after Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a Democrat, decided not to seek re-election. Republicans also appear to be in strong shape in Delaware, where Mr. Biden’s son Joseph R. Biden III, known as Beau, decided not to run, yielding the stage to Representative Michael N. Castle. Mr. Bayh’s retirement makes Republicans justifiably comfortable about their prospects of taking back a state that tilts Republican. An open seat in Illinois means Republicans have a good shot at winning the Senate seat once held by President Obama. In Colorado, where Ken Salazar gave up his Senate seat to become interior secretary, Republicans are hopeful about toppling the appointed senator, Michael Bennet.
Republicans say they have a strong chance of winning in Pennsylvania, where Senator Arlen Specter, who changed his party registration to become a Democrat, is wheezing as he faces a strong primary challenge from the left. And two Democratic senators are clearly in trouble: Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, though a self-identified Tea Party candidate could divide the anti-Reid vote.
If Republicans win all those races, that would put them one seat away from control. But they are not only playing offense. There are seven open seats that were held by Republicans, including four that appear highly competitive: in Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio.
“We feel we’re going to pick up states on their side of the ledger, and that is going to make it harder for them,” said J. B. Poersch, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
In Kentucky, the Republicans’ prospects in the general election have been threatened by a primary battle. Rand Paul, who has the support of the Tea Party, is running strong against Trey Grayson, the secretary of state; Republicans think Mr. Paul could easily win a Republican primary but stumble in a general election.
In Missouri, Democrats said the Republican candidate — Roy Blunt, a former Republican whip in Congress — would have trouble overcoming his past association with President George W. Bush. Republicans are less worried, pointing out that Senator John McCain of Arizona, the party’s presidential nominee in 2008, squeaked out a victory in Missouri over Mr. Obama.
Assuming that Republicans held on to all seven of the open seats and picked up all eight held by vulnerable Democrats, they would still need to pick up one Democratic seat in decidedly less competitive races in California, Connecticut, New York, Washington and Wisconsin.
But the old rule of politics is you can’t beat somebody with nobody. And so far, Republicans are struggling to find top-tier candidates in New York, Washington and Wisconsin.
G.O.P. Hopes for Senate Control Face Hurdles
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON — The retirement of Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana has raised Republicans’ hopes of capturing a significant number of Democratic Senate seats in November. Some Republicans and analysts are even suggesting that the party might take control of the Senate. In theory, at least, that is possible, given the number of Democratic retirements, soaring public disillusionment with Congress and an unemployment rate that seems unlikely to diminish appreciably before November. But a review of the political map suggests how daunting the Republican task would be, requiring both a continuing barrage of bad luck for Democrats and nothing short of a flawless performance by the Republican Party.
That is a lot to get done all at once; flawless is not an adjective often associated with politicians. But the Democrats seem intent on mucking up everything, and have been doing it consistently.
“As the map stands now, if we run the table of competitive races, we can get there,” said Rob Jesmer, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “We hope to get a few more races in play over the next couple months, which would give us some margin for error.” Democrats control the Senate 59 to 41. Because Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. casts the tie-breaking vote if the Senate is split 50-50, Republicans would need to pick up 10 seats to gain control.
For argument’s sake, factor in the possibility that Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent whom Democrats have counted as one of their own, switches his party affiliation if Republicans are on the verge of taking control, a move that Democrats do not rule out. Then Republicans would have to win every one of the eight Democratic-held seats viewed as vulnerable — in Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.
Republicans can probably put North Dakota in the bank today, after Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a Democrat, decided not to seek re-election. Republicans also appear to be in strong shape in Delaware, where Mr. Biden’s son Joseph R. Biden III, known as Beau, decided not to run, yielding the stage to Representative Michael N. Castle. Mr. Bayh’s retirement makes Republicans justifiably comfortable about their prospects of taking back a state that tilts Republican. An open seat in Illinois means Republicans have a good shot at winning the Senate seat once held by President Obama. In Colorado, where Ken Salazar gave up his Senate seat to become interior secretary, Republicans are hopeful about toppling the appointed senator, Michael Bennet.
Republicans say they have a strong chance of winning in Pennsylvania, where Senator Arlen Specter, who changed his party registration to become a Democrat, is wheezing as he faces a strong primary challenge from the left. And two Democratic senators are clearly in trouble: Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, though a self-identified Tea Party candidate could divide the anti-Reid vote.
If Republicans win all those races, that would put them one seat away from control. But they are not only playing offense. There are seven open seats that were held by Republicans, including four that appear highly competitive: in Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio.
“We feel we’re going to pick up states on their side of the ledger, and that is going to make it harder for them,” said J. B. Poersch, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
In Kentucky, the Republicans’ prospects in the general election have been threatened by a primary battle. Rand Paul, who has the support of the Tea Party, is running strong against Trey Grayson, the secretary of state; Republicans think Mr. Paul could easily win a Republican primary but stumble in a general election.
In Missouri, Democrats said the Republican candidate — Roy Blunt, a former Republican whip in Congress — would have trouble overcoming his past association with President George W. Bush. Republicans are less worried, pointing out that Senator John McCain of Arizona, the party’s presidential nominee in 2008, squeaked out a victory in Missouri over Mr. Obama.
Assuming that Republicans held on to all seven of the open seats and picked up all eight held by vulnerable Democrats, they would still need to pick up one Democratic seat in decidedly less competitive races in California, Connecticut, New York, Washington and Wisconsin.
But the old rule of politics is you can’t beat somebody with nobody. And so far, Republicans are struggling to find top-tier candidates in New York, Washington and Wisconsin.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Voter's remorse?
As President Barack Obama began his first State of the Union address Wednesday night, Kevin Fischer glanced at the television above him and compared his 2008 vote for the president to ordering from an infomercial. "You listen to the sales pitch and you're so excited and then it arrives and you open the box and it just crumbles," Mr. Fischer said. "It turns out you didn't get what you thought you were going to."
Exactly how I feel. He can give a good speech, but, where's the beef?
Mr. Fischer, 30 years old, is among many voters here who spoke Wednesday of a creeping unease with Mr. Obama that has supplanted the enthusiasm they once felt. At the same time, many of those same Obama voters said that, given the dire condition of the U.S. when he was sworn into office, not enough time has passed to judge him fairly.
It is only a year, indeed, and he has stanched the economic bleeding, yet I feel a deep unease. The health care reform debacle demolished my confidence, both in the President and the Democratic party. It has also left me angry.
Regret for supporting a Democratic presidential candidate is an unusual sensation in this quiet, snow-covered prairie city. That's because heading into the 2008 election, no Democratic presidential candidate had won here since 1964. Nebraska was second only to Utah in its red-state reliability.
Well, for me the Republicans are none the better, and, in fact, worse: all they have done, down to the very last Republican Senator, is say no. No to everything.
Mr. Fischer said when he voted he believed Mr. Obama would draw down U.S. troops abroad, close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and help get the economy back on track.
"None of that has happened," he said. "I feel duped."
It's a good way of putting it, and duped is a powerful word.
Exactly how I feel. He can give a good speech, but, where's the beef?
Mr. Fischer, 30 years old, is among many voters here who spoke Wednesday of a creeping unease with Mr. Obama that has supplanted the enthusiasm they once felt. At the same time, many of those same Obama voters said that, given the dire condition of the U.S. when he was sworn into office, not enough time has passed to judge him fairly.
It is only a year, indeed, and he has stanched the economic bleeding, yet I feel a deep unease. The health care reform debacle demolished my confidence, both in the President and the Democratic party. It has also left me angry.
Regret for supporting a Democratic presidential candidate is an unusual sensation in this quiet, snow-covered prairie city. That's because heading into the 2008 election, no Democratic presidential candidate had won here since 1964. Nebraska was second only to Utah in its red-state reliability.
Well, for me the Republicans are none the better, and, in fact, worse: all they have done, down to the very last Republican Senator, is say no. No to everything.
Mr. Fischer said when he voted he believed Mr. Obama would draw down U.S. troops abroad, close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and help get the economy back on track.
"None of that has happened," he said. "I feel duped."
It's a good way of putting it, and duped is a powerful word.
Monday, January 11, 2010
The new Know Nothings
This woman writes for UK's The Guardian. She makes some interesting points, to say the least.
In their quest to convince voters that America is in danger, Republicans are lying about 9/11 and baldly denying history
Megan Carpentier
More than 150 years ago, a disparate group of anti-immigrant, conspiracy-minded Americans became sick of traditional politicians and started a grassroots movement to take political power from the hands of those they no longer trusted. When asked by outsiders what their movement was called, they were ordered to answer, "I know nothing," leading others to call them the Know Nothing party. The movement, however, was co-opted by the traditional parties and undermined by policy disagreements, and many members eventually folded into the Republican party. Some things, apparently, don't change as much as we'd like to believe.
Republican leaders, and the 20-somethings crafting their made-for-television talking points, are apparently counting on the fact that their base still knows nothing, or is at least willing to forget what they do know. Not content to blame the Bush-led Wall Street bailouts on President Obama, or the shoe-bomber reprise on Obama's security and intelligence policies that were nonetheless instituted by his predecessors, Republican thought-leaders like Mary Matalin, former White House press secretary Dana Perino and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani have decided that there is one big thing that just couldn't have happened on the Republicans' watch: 9/11.
Perino started the re-write of history in November, baldly stating: "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." Matalin picked up the torch shortly after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab set his crotch on fire, claiming that Bush "inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history."
Who buys this stuff?
Most astonishingly, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani – who made his national political reputation on the tragedy of the 2,752 people who died from a terrorist attack in the city he led – told Americans on Friday: "We had no domestic attacks under Bush." In the wake of widespread disbelief that Giuliani would repudiate the deaths in his own city in an effort to defend an unpopular former president who presided over not one by two attacks by foreign terrorists on American soil – not including the anthrax attacks – Giuliani was forced to admit he did, indeed, remember September 11th. That is, undoubtedly, a relief to both his wife and his political advisers, if small solace to the families of those whose deaths he seems happy to use as a political weapon against the opposing party.
Repeat something, even a lie, long enough, and some people will believe it. And Guiliani, thrice-divorced, will say anything.
In the end, though, the brain trust – such as it is – of the Republican party wouldn't be attempting to re-write recent history if their focus groups and polls didn't show that truthiness pays political dividends. Shortly after Perino's comments, polls showed voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on issues of national security and that 63% of voters think that "political correctness" – a refusal to disobey laws prohibiting racial profiling – was the root cause of the failure to prevent one soldier's attack on his colleagues at Fort Hood.
Republicans have apparently decided that they can improve their standings with Americans if they can convince them, despite all evidence to the contrary, that terrorist attacks only happen when Democrats are in power. Republicans seem perfectly and increasingly happy to slough off all responsibility for the things that happened and that they caused during their watch, as long as it brings them back to power. The question for Americans ought to be what they'll do with that power when they get it back. Last year, they weren't so keen on keeping Republicans in power. This year, many of them seemingly know nothing about that.
George Santayana once said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In this country, Republicans are trying hard to make sure Americans cannot remember the past in which a Republican president ignored a security assessment warning of the attacks of 11 September, in which he chose to prosecute a war against a country that wasn't, at the time, harbouring the terrorists that attacked us, or in which a terrorist without a Muslim name or Islamic appearance boarded a plane and attempted to detonate his feet. And they certainly don't want us to remember anything about a Republican president who told Americans that he didn't know nothing about the location of the person who masterminded the biggest terrorist attack on American soil, nor did he care. If you know nothing, and no one else does either, you apparently can't be held accountable for anything.
In their quest to convince voters that America is in danger, Republicans are lying about 9/11 and baldly denying history
Megan Carpentier
More than 150 years ago, a disparate group of anti-immigrant, conspiracy-minded Americans became sick of traditional politicians and started a grassroots movement to take political power from the hands of those they no longer trusted. When asked by outsiders what their movement was called, they were ordered to answer, "I know nothing," leading others to call them the Know Nothing party. The movement, however, was co-opted by the traditional parties and undermined by policy disagreements, and many members eventually folded into the Republican party. Some things, apparently, don't change as much as we'd like to believe.
Republican leaders, and the 20-somethings crafting their made-for-television talking points, are apparently counting on the fact that their base still knows nothing, or is at least willing to forget what they do know. Not content to blame the Bush-led Wall Street bailouts on President Obama, or the shoe-bomber reprise on Obama's security and intelligence policies that were nonetheless instituted by his predecessors, Republican thought-leaders like Mary Matalin, former White House press secretary Dana Perino and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani have decided that there is one big thing that just couldn't have happened on the Republicans' watch: 9/11.
Perino started the re-write of history in November, baldly stating: "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." Matalin picked up the torch shortly after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab set his crotch on fire, claiming that Bush "inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history."
Who buys this stuff?
Most astonishingly, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani – who made his national political reputation on the tragedy of the 2,752 people who died from a terrorist attack in the city he led – told Americans on Friday: "We had no domestic attacks under Bush." In the wake of widespread disbelief that Giuliani would repudiate the deaths in his own city in an effort to defend an unpopular former president who presided over not one by two attacks by foreign terrorists on American soil – not including the anthrax attacks – Giuliani was forced to admit he did, indeed, remember September 11th. That is, undoubtedly, a relief to both his wife and his political advisers, if small solace to the families of those whose deaths he seems happy to use as a political weapon against the opposing party.
Repeat something, even a lie, long enough, and some people will believe it. And Guiliani, thrice-divorced, will say anything.
In the end, though, the brain trust – such as it is – of the Republican party wouldn't be attempting to re-write recent history if their focus groups and polls didn't show that truthiness pays political dividends. Shortly after Perino's comments, polls showed voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on issues of national security and that 63% of voters think that "political correctness" – a refusal to disobey laws prohibiting racial profiling – was the root cause of the failure to prevent one soldier's attack on his colleagues at Fort Hood.
Republicans have apparently decided that they can improve their standings with Americans if they can convince them, despite all evidence to the contrary, that terrorist attacks only happen when Democrats are in power. Republicans seem perfectly and increasingly happy to slough off all responsibility for the things that happened and that they caused during their watch, as long as it brings them back to power. The question for Americans ought to be what they'll do with that power when they get it back. Last year, they weren't so keen on keeping Republicans in power. This year, many of them seemingly know nothing about that.
George Santayana once said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In this country, Republicans are trying hard to make sure Americans cannot remember the past in which a Republican president ignored a security assessment warning of the attacks of 11 September, in which he chose to prosecute a war against a country that wasn't, at the time, harbouring the terrorists that attacked us, or in which a terrorist without a Muslim name or Islamic appearance boarded a plane and attempted to detonate his feet. And they certainly don't want us to remember anything about a Republican president who told Americans that he didn't know nothing about the location of the person who masterminded the biggest terrorist attack on American soil, nor did he care. If you know nothing, and no one else does either, you apparently can't be held accountable for anything.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
GOP seizes on terror issue
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Health care got done. Birthers are gone. Tea parties, ditto. Republicans need an issue. They think they got one.
Today's headlines in the Post: Great Balls of Fire; and the News: Pants on fire. Guess that Murdoch's boys aren't so fussy about wording.
Republicans have wasted no time in attacking Democrats on intelligence and screening failures leading up to the failed Christmas Day bombing of Flight 253 — a significant departure from the calibrated, less partisan responses that have followed other recent terrorist activity.
The strategy — coming as the Republican leadership seeks to exploit Democratic weaknesses heading into the 2010 midterms — is in many ways a natural for a party that views protecting the U.S. homeland as its ideological raison d’etre and electoral franchise.
Anything that sticks will be fine with the right.
“In the past six weeks, you’ve had the Fort Hood attack, the D.C. Five and now the attempted attack on the plane in Detroit … and they all underscored the clear philosophical difference between the administration and us,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
This is the party that allowed 9/11 to occur, that botched the war in Afghanistan.
“I think Secretary Napolitano and the rest of the Obama administration view their role as law enforcement, first responders dealing with the aftermath of an attack,” Hoekstra told POLITICO. “And we believe in a forward-looking approach to stopping these attacks before they happen.”
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) went even further, telling FOX News that the Christmas attack proved President Obama’s talk-to-your-enemies approach might actually be encouraging terrorists.
DeMint is blocking a vote on the TSA nominee. Brilliant. His reason?
DeMint says he’s blocking Southers because the top cop at Los Angeles International Airport hasn’t vowed to block TSA unionization. And spokesman Wes Denton said the agency is better off headless than with big labor running the nation’s airports.
Anti-unionism interfering with national security, and this bozo is beefing?
Today's headlines in the Post: Great Balls of Fire; and the News: Pants on fire. Guess that Murdoch's boys aren't so fussy about wording.
Republicans have wasted no time in attacking Democrats on intelligence and screening failures leading up to the failed Christmas Day bombing of Flight 253 — a significant departure from the calibrated, less partisan responses that have followed other recent terrorist activity.
The strategy — coming as the Republican leadership seeks to exploit Democratic weaknesses heading into the 2010 midterms — is in many ways a natural for a party that views protecting the U.S. homeland as its ideological raison d’etre and electoral franchise.
Anything that sticks will be fine with the right.
“In the past six weeks, you’ve had the Fort Hood attack, the D.C. Five and now the attempted attack on the plane in Detroit … and they all underscored the clear philosophical difference between the administration and us,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
This is the party that allowed 9/11 to occur, that botched the war in Afghanistan.
“I think Secretary Napolitano and the rest of the Obama administration view their role as law enforcement, first responders dealing with the aftermath of an attack,” Hoekstra told POLITICO. “And we believe in a forward-looking approach to stopping these attacks before they happen.”
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) went even further, telling FOX News that the Christmas attack proved President Obama’s talk-to-your-enemies approach might actually be encouraging terrorists.
DeMint is blocking a vote on the TSA nominee. Brilliant. His reason?
DeMint says he’s blocking Southers because the top cop at Los Angeles International Airport hasn’t vowed to block TSA unionization. And spokesman Wes Denton said the agency is better off headless than with big labor running the nation’s airports.
Anti-unionism interfering with national security, and this bozo is beefing?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Steele Rebukes Palin, Pawlenty
Will he be in charge of the GOP in 2010? Maybe. 2012? Not a chance.
Rogue warfare, perhaps? RNC Chairman Michael Steele issued a stern rebuke to conservatives like Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty, who immersed themselves in Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman’s losing House campaign. “If you don't live in the district, you don't vote there, your opinion doesn't matter very much,” Steele said. "It serves as an important lesson on how we manage an opportunity to win a seat. And how not to mismanage by putting in a botched process.” Steele went on, “I don't see a victory in losing seats. I'm in the business of multiplication and addition. I want more Republicans. I don't buy that we somehow find victory in defeat.”
And da winner waz
GOP civil war the only real win for Democrats on Election Day
Republican infighting, conservatives v. moderates, lone saving grace.
Republican infighting, conservatives v. moderates, lone saving grace.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Strategy appears to work
After months of plodding work by five Congressional committees and weeks of back-room bargaining by Democratic leaders, President Obama’s arms-length strategy on health care appears to be paying dividends, with the House and the Senate poised to take up legislation to insure nearly all Americans.
Appears to be working, that oft-criticized strategy. Perhaps all the pundits were wrong.
The bills have advanced further than many lawmakers expected. Five separate measures are now pared down to two. But the legislative progress has come at a price. In the absence of specific guidance from the White House, it has moved ahead in fits and starts. From here on, the challenges will only grow more difficult.
In fits and starts, but it has moved. Out of committees, soon onto the floors.
In the Senate, where Democrats will need support from every member of their caucus to reach a critical 60-vote threshold to avoid a potential filibuster, Mr. Obama’s hands-off strategy carries particular risks. Without clear direction from the president on the public option, the Democratic leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, moved ahead last week on his own, unveiling a bill that includes a government-run plan, but allows states to opt out.
Within hours, the proposal was being questioned by centrist Democrats whose concerns Mr. Obama must now address. As Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said, “When you are seeking 60 votes, every person is a kingmaker.”
Including Senator Lieberman, who needs to have his knuckles rapped.
Last week’s back-and-forth in the Senate was emblematic of a process that has at times seemed on the brink of anarchy. Lawmakers have missed many deadlines, including the one Mr. Obama set for all five Congressional committees to wrap up work by August. (Only four did.) Even close allies of the White House sometimes questioned its approach.
But it has worked.
Mr. Emanuel also said it was no accident that “the basic bones” of the House and Senate legislation were, despite some big differences, quite similar. “While there was a cry for more presidential direction,” he said, “that direction was being provided by the president’s staff.”
The No. 3 Republican in the Senate, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who attended one session with the president, recalled that in the 1960s, when he was a Congressional aide, Democrats and Republicans worked together on civil rights. He said he saw no possibility of a bipartisan health bill. “White House officials don’t want one or don’t know how to do one,” Mr. Alexander said.
White House? How about Republicans? What they know how to do is criticize, and say no.
Appears to be working, that oft-criticized strategy. Perhaps all the pundits were wrong.
The bills have advanced further than many lawmakers expected. Five separate measures are now pared down to two. But the legislative progress has come at a price. In the absence of specific guidance from the White House, it has moved ahead in fits and starts. From here on, the challenges will only grow more difficult.
In fits and starts, but it has moved. Out of committees, soon onto the floors.
In the Senate, where Democrats will need support from every member of their caucus to reach a critical 60-vote threshold to avoid a potential filibuster, Mr. Obama’s hands-off strategy carries particular risks. Without clear direction from the president on the public option, the Democratic leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, moved ahead last week on his own, unveiling a bill that includes a government-run plan, but allows states to opt out.
Within hours, the proposal was being questioned by centrist Democrats whose concerns Mr. Obama must now address. As Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said, “When you are seeking 60 votes, every person is a kingmaker.”
Including Senator Lieberman, who needs to have his knuckles rapped.
Last week’s back-and-forth in the Senate was emblematic of a process that has at times seemed on the brink of anarchy. Lawmakers have missed many deadlines, including the one Mr. Obama set for all five Congressional committees to wrap up work by August. (Only four did.) Even close allies of the White House sometimes questioned its approach.
But it has worked.
Mr. Emanuel also said it was no accident that “the basic bones” of the House and Senate legislation were, despite some big differences, quite similar. “While there was a cry for more presidential direction,” he said, “that direction was being provided by the president’s staff.”
The No. 3 Republican in the Senate, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who attended one session with the president, recalled that in the 1960s, when he was a Congressional aide, Democrats and Republicans worked together on civil rights. He said he saw no possibility of a bipartisan health bill. “White House officials don’t want one or don’t know how to do one,” Mr. Alexander said.
White House? How about Republicans? What they know how to do is criticize, and say no.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Bush memoirs to haunt GOP
For Republicans looking forward to the first Bush-free election in a decade, the book publishing schedule is the bearer of bad news: Between New Year’s Day and next November, as many as five Bush administration officials — including the former president himself — will rehash history in hardback.
First Hank Paulson, that lovable Treasury Secretary, then Laura, then W himself. Should be neat.
The Bush montage plays right into the hands of Democrats, says Democratic strategist Douglas Schoen, who predicts that the midterm elections will be a battle between those who will try to make it a belated referendum on the Bush administration and those who will try to make it a premature referendum on the Obama administration.
Well, jobs will play a significant role, and the Republicans will try to emphasize that, whilst trying to dodge all those books.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Republicans Flip Out Over Nobel
>Has Obama’s peace prize set off a war at home? Conservatives are lining up to blast the prize: Bill Kristol compares Obama to Gorbachev, writing “Let’s hope …that, beginning in 2012, Obama will have lots of free time to spend hobnobbing with Gorbachev on the international celebrity circuit.” Erik Erickson at Powerline said, “I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota for it.” And Rush Limbaugh said, “They love a weakened, neutered U.S. and this is their way of promoting that concept.” The DNC, meanwhile, hit back hard, saying “The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists—the Taliban and Hamas this morning—in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.”
House Votes to Expand Hate Crimes Definition
The measure was named in part for Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student murdered in 1998.
The House voted Thursday to expand the definition of violent federal hate crimes to those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation, a step that would extend new protection to lesbian, gay and transgender people.
Democrats hailed the vote of 281 to 146, which brought the measure to the brink of becoming law, as the culmination of a long push to curb violent expressions of bias like the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student.
Representative John A. Boehner, the House Republican leader, voiced opposition to the measure.
Republicans criticized the legislation, saying violent attacks were already illegal regardless of motive. They said the measure was an effort to create a class of “thought crimes” whose prosecution would require ascribing motivation to the attacker.
Thought? Aren't all crimes that are outlawed as hate crimes the same? How does anybody know that a crime was perpetrated against a black person because the person is black and not another reason? Because the victim was black and the crime seems to have been committed precisely for that reason. Same with gays. Republicans, most, anyway, do not want to vote for anything connected with gay, to stay on the good side of the extreme right-wingers who demand such behavior.
Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, called the legislation radical social policy. “The idea that we’re going to pass a law that’s going to add further charges to someone based on what they may have been thinking, I think is wrong,” Mr. Boehner said.
Another enlightened view of Mr. Suntan.
Republicans were also furious that the measure was attached to an essential $681 billion military policy bill, and accused Democrats of legislative blackmail. Even some Republican members of the usually collegial House Armed Services Committee who helped write the broader legislation, which authorizes military pay, weapons programs and other necessities for the armed forces, opposed the bill in the end, solely because of the hate crimes provision.
“We believe this is a poison pill, poisonous enough that we refuse to be blackmailed into voting for a piece of social agenda that has no place in this bill,” said Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, a senior Republican member of the committee.
The military bill has yet to be approved by the Senate. But the hate crimes provision has solid support there, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the overall bill outweighed his own objections to including the hate crimes measure.
Mr. Obama supports the hate crimes provision, though the White House has raised objections to elements of the bill related to military acquisitions. If signed into law, the hate crimes legislation would reflect the ability of Democrats to enact difficult measures with their increased majorities in Congress and a Democrat in the White House.
“Elections have consequences,” Mr. McCain said.
McCain can speak clearly.
Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 House Republican, said the measure could inhibit freedom of speech and deter religious leaders from discussing their views on homosexuality for fear that those publicly expressed views might be linked to later assaults.
“It is just simply wrong,” Mr. Pence said, “to use a bill designed to support our troops to reverse the very freedoms for which they fight.”
Democrats, however, noted that the bill would specifically bar prosecution based on an individual’s expression of “racial, religious, political or other beliefs.” It also states that nothing in the measure should be “construed to diminish any rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution.”
Amazing how two sides can see the same thing so differently.
The House voted Thursday to expand the definition of violent federal hate crimes to those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation, a step that would extend new protection to lesbian, gay and transgender people.
Democrats hailed the vote of 281 to 146, which brought the measure to the brink of becoming law, as the culmination of a long push to curb violent expressions of bias like the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student.
Representative John A. Boehner, the House Republican leader, voiced opposition to the measure.
Republicans criticized the legislation, saying violent attacks were already illegal regardless of motive. They said the measure was an effort to create a class of “thought crimes” whose prosecution would require ascribing motivation to the attacker.
Thought? Aren't all crimes that are outlawed as hate crimes the same? How does anybody know that a crime was perpetrated against a black person because the person is black and not another reason? Because the victim was black and the crime seems to have been committed precisely for that reason. Same with gays. Republicans, most, anyway, do not want to vote for anything connected with gay, to stay on the good side of the extreme right-wingers who demand such behavior.
Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, called the legislation radical social policy. “The idea that we’re going to pass a law that’s going to add further charges to someone based on what they may have been thinking, I think is wrong,” Mr. Boehner said.
Another enlightened view of Mr. Suntan.
Republicans were also furious that the measure was attached to an essential $681 billion military policy bill, and accused Democrats of legislative blackmail. Even some Republican members of the usually collegial House Armed Services Committee who helped write the broader legislation, which authorizes military pay, weapons programs and other necessities for the armed forces, opposed the bill in the end, solely because of the hate crimes provision.
“We believe this is a poison pill, poisonous enough that we refuse to be blackmailed into voting for a piece of social agenda that has no place in this bill,” said Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, a senior Republican member of the committee.
The military bill has yet to be approved by the Senate. But the hate crimes provision has solid support there, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the overall bill outweighed his own objections to including the hate crimes measure.
Mr. Obama supports the hate crimes provision, though the White House has raised objections to elements of the bill related to military acquisitions. If signed into law, the hate crimes legislation would reflect the ability of Democrats to enact difficult measures with their increased majorities in Congress and a Democrat in the White House.
“Elections have consequences,” Mr. McCain said.
McCain can speak clearly.
Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 House Republican, said the measure could inhibit freedom of speech and deter religious leaders from discussing their views on homosexuality for fear that those publicly expressed views might be linked to later assaults.
“It is just simply wrong,” Mr. Pence said, “to use a bill designed to support our troops to reverse the very freedoms for which they fight.”
Democrats, however, noted that the bill would specifically bar prosecution based on an individual’s expression of “racial, religious, political or other beliefs.” It also states that nothing in the measure should be “construed to diminish any rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution.”
Amazing how two sides can see the same thing so differently.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Divided Traditional Allies
Business is parting from its traditional allies in the Republican Party on health care as companies and big corporate lobbyists lend tentative support to a congressional overhaul that conservative lawmakers staunchly oppose.
Staunchly: steadfastness: loyalty in the face of trouble and difficulty is one way to define the term, and the Republicans are facing troubles and difficulties, indeed.
The rift mirrors a similar divide on other issues, including immigration and climate change, where many companies have backed legislative action that Republican lawmakers oppose. But the health-care debate, in particular, casts a spotlight on the split in the longstanding alliance between economic conservatives and the business community. Republican lawmakers are digging in to oppose the overhaul effort as a big-spending government intrusion.
Big-spending intrusion is when the Democrats are in power; when Republicans are in power the same thing is called reform by Republicans.
Many companies, on the other hand, cite soaring costs to explain why they continue to back the congressional work under way to revamp the health-care system, despite misgivings over a range of provisions.
Drug and insurance companies have also signed on, though their goals are far less ambitious than those of others.
Just as Sen. Baucus was preparing to unveil his plan, the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group that represents major U.S. multinationals, released a study arguing that congressional inaction was not an option.
Even the Republicans have hurriedly put together some sort of proposal, for simply saying no is not a good strategy (other than pleasing their right-wing base).
The study found that without any changes to the current system, the cost to insure a single employee, including the person's own out-of-pocket expenses, would jump to more than $28,000 a year by 2019, from around $11,000 a year now.
155% increase in cost in ten years. Wow!
"The reality with the business community is that we want reform, while some Republicans want to stop this train and start over," said Bruce Josten, the chamber's chief lobbyist. "That is just not going to happen."
That pretty much says it: health care reform is going to pass, perhaps by December, and the Republicans will not be able to stop it.
"I wouldn't confuse pleasant noises about the Baucus bill with an endorsement," said Republican Rep. David Camp of Michigan. "If this bill tacks left, which it is already doing, business won't support it."
Of course, some people can't see or smell what they've stepped on.
Republicans have been particularly furious at the pharmaceutical industry, whose early willingness to cooperate with the White House and with Sen. Baucus proved crucial in keeping the push for an overhaul alive this summer. In June, the drug makers' lobbying group, PhRMA, cut a surprise deal with Mr. Baucus, offering to slash $80 billion in drug costs in exchange for a range of protections from the government.
No one howls as loud as a spurned lover.
That deal was shortly followed by the announcement of $150 billion in concessions by the hospital industry. House Republican leader John Boehner blasted the PhRMA deal in a letter to the group's president, Billy Tauzin, a former Republican lawmaker.
Staunchly: steadfastness: loyalty in the face of trouble and difficulty is one way to define the term, and the Republicans are facing troubles and difficulties, indeed.
The rift mirrors a similar divide on other issues, including immigration and climate change, where many companies have backed legislative action that Republican lawmakers oppose. But the health-care debate, in particular, casts a spotlight on the split in the longstanding alliance between economic conservatives and the business community. Republican lawmakers are digging in to oppose the overhaul effort as a big-spending government intrusion.
Big-spending intrusion is when the Democrats are in power; when Republicans are in power the same thing is called reform by Republicans.
Many companies, on the other hand, cite soaring costs to explain why they continue to back the congressional work under way to revamp the health-care system, despite misgivings over a range of provisions.
Drug and insurance companies have also signed on, though their goals are far less ambitious than those of others.
Just as Sen. Baucus was preparing to unveil his plan, the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group that represents major U.S. multinationals, released a study arguing that congressional inaction was not an option.
Even the Republicans have hurriedly put together some sort of proposal, for simply saying no is not a good strategy (other than pleasing their right-wing base).
The study found that without any changes to the current system, the cost to insure a single employee, including the person's own out-of-pocket expenses, would jump to more than $28,000 a year by 2019, from around $11,000 a year now.
155% increase in cost in ten years. Wow!
"The reality with the business community is that we want reform, while some Republicans want to stop this train and start over," said Bruce Josten, the chamber's chief lobbyist. "That is just not going to happen."
That pretty much says it: health care reform is going to pass, perhaps by December, and the Republicans will not be able to stop it.
"I wouldn't confuse pleasant noises about the Baucus bill with an endorsement," said Republican Rep. David Camp of Michigan. "If this bill tacks left, which it is already doing, business won't support it."
Of course, some people can't see or smell what they've stepped on.
Republicans have been particularly furious at the pharmaceutical industry, whose early willingness to cooperate with the White House and with Sen. Baucus proved crucial in keeping the push for an overhaul alive this summer. In June, the drug makers' lobbying group, PhRMA, cut a surprise deal with Mr. Baucus, offering to slash $80 billion in drug costs in exchange for a range of protections from the government.
No one howls as loud as a spurned lover.
That deal was shortly followed by the announcement of $150 billion in concessions by the hospital industry. House Republican leader John Boehner blasted the PhRMA deal in a letter to the group's president, Billy Tauzin, a former Republican lawmaker.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Liberals: rethink tenets
I find Matt Miller's viewpoint and writing style refreshing. Both of these articles offer some ideas that are not bandied about, and are, thus, valuable. Orthodoxy needs to be subordinated to pragmatism.
Why Liberals Should Drop The Public Option - by Matt Miller
A dangerous sentiment on the left threatens to derail what could be the biggest progressive achievement in half a century. It's the view that any health-care reform that doesn't include a public option isn't "real" reform, and thus isn't worth doing. This mantra has become an article of faith among many Democrats who haven't necessarily thought through the matter but who take their cues from leaders advancing this argument. Unless liberals rethink this premise, and fast, Democrats will squander their best chance in a generation to end the scandal of the uninsured, bring health security to every American family and begin the long-term process of getting national health costs under control.
Take their cues is another way of saying repeat the same platitudes, make the same arguments, and not have original thoughts. It is just so easy to repeat what has already been said.
The first fallacy of the "public option or nothing" mantra is the notion that we'll never cover everyone without a Medicare-style program for Americans under 65. The experiences of Switzerland and the Netherlands prove that this isn't the case. Both have pioneered market-based universal health care. Both cover all their citizens using private insurers, and they do so for much less cost - 10 percent of gross domestic product for the Dutch and 12 percent for Switzerland, compared with 17 percent in the United States, where nearly 50 million people are still uninsured.
The public option has become the test, of both liberals and conservatives, the crux of the argument that often overtakes the real issue: health care reform. Conservatives use it to scream socialism and big government, and liberal try to refute the argument with logic.
Those countries also boast better health outcomes than we do, even when compared to states with similar demographics, such as Connecticut and Massachusetts. Sick people in both countries are pursued as customers by private insurers (rather than shunned, as they are in the United States) because health plans are paid more for sick enrollees via a government-designed system of "risk adjustment." The Swiss and Dutch achievements are important because conservative critics often act as though fully socialized systems, such as those in Britain and Canada, are the inevitable result of any drive for universal coverage. In fact, as these two countries show, it is possible to cover everyone without a "big government takeover."
Conservative critics will find fault with the President's proposed program, no matter what, but it is better to take away some of their ammunition by avoiding "a government takover." It might also make the system work more efficiently. The government is no model of efficiency.
US insurance companies have agreed to drop pre-existing conditions and to pursue the currently uninsured as potential customers. I've heard Aetna's CEO say so.
A related fallacy is that the public option is the most important issue to debate. It's not. The central progressive breakthrough in any reform should be to make it possible for every American to access group health coverage outside the employment setting - access that does not currently exist but which the proposed insurance exchanges would enable. What's critical, therefore, is the structure of these exchanges and the rules about who would be eligible to use them. Such questions have received disturbingly little attention but need to be front and center. For example, some legislation proposes barring people who enjoy employer-based coverage from seeking insurance from the new exchanges; this ban should be scrapped in favor of the choice proposal offered by Sen. Ron Wyden, under which employees could use the cash their companies spend on their benefits to buy coverage they prefer at the exchange.
The insistence on pushing the public option threatens to derail the effort of reforming the health care system sufficiently to cover everyone, and make it work somewhat better.
I respect those in my party who seek the single-payer system into which the public option might eventually evolve. But I don't agree that it's the best answer for the United States. Though single payer has merits, especially in administrative efficiency, it would also likely freeze in place our fragmented, uncoordinated system of fee-for-service care. It would encourage providers to goose volume (to boost their incomes) rather than improve quality and would offer greater rewards for providers of acute care when we need a fresh focus on chronic disease management. Single payer also asks government to do things I don't think it is competent to do, such as setting prices across a large swath of the health sector in ways that seem certain to create damaging rigidities or resource misallocations (as happens in Medicare). Finally, if government is the sole payer, provider payments will become even more politicized than they are today. On the eve of beneficial innovations in drug therapies, devices and cost-effective ways to deliver better care, it is ill-advised to make the government's hand too rigid. Private health plans have many flaws, to be sure, but if sensibly regulated they're likely to respond more nimbly to disperse medical innovations.
Why is a single-payer system what the left wants? I do not want government running health insurance to the exclusion of all other players. I want everyone to be covered, and I want some cost reductions and efficiencies introduced into the system. Don't make the government's hand too rigid; allow for flexibility.
Liberals should make peace with the notion that a regulated market of competing private health plans can be the vehicle for getting everyone covered. Yes, it means that unlike some other advanced countries, we'll have billions of "health" dollars siphoned off by middlemen and marketers. But if liberals think of it as a jobs program, they'll learn to love it. If everyone's covered and insurer "cherry-picking" is dead, health insurance will come to look more like a regulated utility.
And, although Con Edison and its cohorts are no great models of benevolence, they are well regulated and don't deny anyone electricity because of a pre-existing condition of darkness.
Those on the left still seeking incentive should consider: In 2006, Sen. Ted Kennedy urged Massachusetts Democrats to support Mitt Romney's plan for universal coverage via a competing system of regulated private insurers, paired with an individual mandate and subsidies for low earners. Kennedy knew this would become a model for a bipartisan fix for the country. Now, a Kennedy-approved model is within reach. Liberals, far from resisting it as a setback, should celebrate it as a triumph.
Indeed.
Matt Miller, a former Clinton White House aide, is a management consultant and the author of "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas." In recent years he has advised and given paid speeches to doctor groups, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms and insurance companies, as well as to low-income advocacy groups promoting universal coverage.
from The Financial Times
Lessons For Obama From Ted Kennedy's Noble Flops
by Matt Miller
Edward Kennedy fought to expand health coverage for 40 years, yet millions more Americans lack insurance today than when he started, and bankruptcy due to medical bills has become a uniquely American shame.
The senator for Massachusetts, who died last month, fought perenially to raise the minimum wage, but that wage is lower today as a percentage of average hourly earnings in the US than in 1970. Kennedy also fought to improve schools in impoverished neighbourhoods. Yet today, among advanced nations, 17 boast higher student achievement than in the US alongside test scores less correlated with a child's socio-economic status.
For all Kennedy's efforts, in other words, the fabled "land of opportunity" now offers its citizens a smaller chance of moving up from their economic status at birth than do France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada and Germany.
These observations are not meant to be churlish or in bad taste; Senator Kennedy has rightly been hailed as a passionate voice for the voiceless and a master of the legislative process. But any assessment of his legacy is incomplete if it fails to ask why American liberalism's modern icon proved so ineffective in persuading his country to share his vision.
This is not a matter of abstract interest. President Barack Obama stands little chance of succeeding in the coming healthcare endgame without understanding why, for all his passion, Kennedy could not make the sale. No man can reverse the tides of history, perhaps, but it was not inevitable that American politics would lurch so far to the right over the course of Kennedy's career. The US economy more than doubled in real terms between 1970 and 2008. Why wasn't America inclined to devote a portion of this bounty to mend the problems Kennedy identified, instead of allowing many of them to worsen?
There is no single answer. But one reason was the sense among voters that liberals tended to worry more about the poor than about the struggling middle class. This same sentiment now threatens Mr Obama's health reform.
"We have to do better at making this issue a moral imperative," Tom Daschle, former Senate majority leader (and Obama confidante) told the New York Times Magazine last month. "This in many respects is the civil rights battle of the early part of this century." But middle-class voters do not see healthcare as a "civil rights issue" - a cause in which they should enlist to bring justice to others. With soaring premiums and shrinking and precarious coverage, the 85 per cent of Americans who have health insurance see reform as a matter of economic security for their families.
Unfortunately, the American left has for years defined the issue predominantly as a matter of ending the scandal of the uninsured. They have misled the public with the incoherent claim that expanding coverage to 50m uninsured Americans would be a way to save money.
The Democratic argument has failed to emphasise how health reform can deepen the economic security (anmd improve the health status) of the middle class. Yes, one part of that argument is to ensure that no American in the 21st century goes without coverage. But the liberal instinct - to focus first on the neediest in ways that lead squeezed middle-income voters to conclude liberals want to take their hard-earned money and spend it on someone else - helps explain why Kennedy-style politics never prevailed.
Democrats need to frame their goals as inclusive measures to promote security and opportunity in a global economy - improving the life chances of society's most luckless but also bolstering the security and prospects of America's vast middle class. This is also the only way to persuade average Americans to pay for such policies, which eventually they must.
The White House is scrambling to repair its argument on healthcare to win over the middle class. But similar cases and policies must be framed if Democrats are to build on Kennedy's noble failures and make real headway on schools, wages and more.
This demands a new way of thinking. It took an act of imagination for a son of wealth and privilege such as Edward M. ?Kennedy to devote his life to helping those who had little. It will take another act of imagination for liberals to fulfill Kennedy's dreams by aligning them more closely with middle-class imperatives in a global age.
Why Liberals Should Drop The Public Option - by Matt Miller
A dangerous sentiment on the left threatens to derail what could be the biggest progressive achievement in half a century. It's the view that any health-care reform that doesn't include a public option isn't "real" reform, and thus isn't worth doing. This mantra has become an article of faith among many Democrats who haven't necessarily thought through the matter but who take their cues from leaders advancing this argument. Unless liberals rethink this premise, and fast, Democrats will squander their best chance in a generation to end the scandal of the uninsured, bring health security to every American family and begin the long-term process of getting national health costs under control.
Take their cues is another way of saying repeat the same platitudes, make the same arguments, and not have original thoughts. It is just so easy to repeat what has already been said.
The first fallacy of the "public option or nothing" mantra is the notion that we'll never cover everyone without a Medicare-style program for Americans under 65. The experiences of Switzerland and the Netherlands prove that this isn't the case. Both have pioneered market-based universal health care. Both cover all their citizens using private insurers, and they do so for much less cost - 10 percent of gross domestic product for the Dutch and 12 percent for Switzerland, compared with 17 percent in the United States, where nearly 50 million people are still uninsured.
The public option has become the test, of both liberals and conservatives, the crux of the argument that often overtakes the real issue: health care reform. Conservatives use it to scream socialism and big government, and liberal try to refute the argument with logic.
Those countries also boast better health outcomes than we do, even when compared to states with similar demographics, such as Connecticut and Massachusetts. Sick people in both countries are pursued as customers by private insurers (rather than shunned, as they are in the United States) because health plans are paid more for sick enrollees via a government-designed system of "risk adjustment." The Swiss and Dutch achievements are important because conservative critics often act as though fully socialized systems, such as those in Britain and Canada, are the inevitable result of any drive for universal coverage. In fact, as these two countries show, it is possible to cover everyone without a "big government takeover."
Conservative critics will find fault with the President's proposed program, no matter what, but it is better to take away some of their ammunition by avoiding "a government takover." It might also make the system work more efficiently. The government is no model of efficiency.
US insurance companies have agreed to drop pre-existing conditions and to pursue the currently uninsured as potential customers. I've heard Aetna's CEO say so.
A related fallacy is that the public option is the most important issue to debate. It's not. The central progressive breakthrough in any reform should be to make it possible for every American to access group health coverage outside the employment setting - access that does not currently exist but which the proposed insurance exchanges would enable. What's critical, therefore, is the structure of these exchanges and the rules about who would be eligible to use them. Such questions have received disturbingly little attention but need to be front and center. For example, some legislation proposes barring people who enjoy employer-based coverage from seeking insurance from the new exchanges; this ban should be scrapped in favor of the choice proposal offered by Sen. Ron Wyden, under which employees could use the cash their companies spend on their benefits to buy coverage they prefer at the exchange.
The insistence on pushing the public option threatens to derail the effort of reforming the health care system sufficiently to cover everyone, and make it work somewhat better.
I respect those in my party who seek the single-payer system into which the public option might eventually evolve. But I don't agree that it's the best answer for the United States. Though single payer has merits, especially in administrative efficiency, it would also likely freeze in place our fragmented, uncoordinated system of fee-for-service care. It would encourage providers to goose volume (to boost their incomes) rather than improve quality and would offer greater rewards for providers of acute care when we need a fresh focus on chronic disease management. Single payer also asks government to do things I don't think it is competent to do, such as setting prices across a large swath of the health sector in ways that seem certain to create damaging rigidities or resource misallocations (as happens in Medicare). Finally, if government is the sole payer, provider payments will become even more politicized than they are today. On the eve of beneficial innovations in drug therapies, devices and cost-effective ways to deliver better care, it is ill-advised to make the government's hand too rigid. Private health plans have many flaws, to be sure, but if sensibly regulated they're likely to respond more nimbly to disperse medical innovations.
Why is a single-payer system what the left wants? I do not want government running health insurance to the exclusion of all other players. I want everyone to be covered, and I want some cost reductions and efficiencies introduced into the system. Don't make the government's hand too rigid; allow for flexibility.
Liberals should make peace with the notion that a regulated market of competing private health plans can be the vehicle for getting everyone covered. Yes, it means that unlike some other advanced countries, we'll have billions of "health" dollars siphoned off by middlemen and marketers. But if liberals think of it as a jobs program, they'll learn to love it. If everyone's covered and insurer "cherry-picking" is dead, health insurance will come to look more like a regulated utility.
And, although Con Edison and its cohorts are no great models of benevolence, they are well regulated and don't deny anyone electricity because of a pre-existing condition of darkness.
Those on the left still seeking incentive should consider: In 2006, Sen. Ted Kennedy urged Massachusetts Democrats to support Mitt Romney's plan for universal coverage via a competing system of regulated private insurers, paired with an individual mandate and subsidies for low earners. Kennedy knew this would become a model for a bipartisan fix for the country. Now, a Kennedy-approved model is within reach. Liberals, far from resisting it as a setback, should celebrate it as a triumph.
Indeed.
Matt Miller, a former Clinton White House aide, is a management consultant and the author of "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas." In recent years he has advised and given paid speeches to doctor groups, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms and insurance companies, as well as to low-income advocacy groups promoting universal coverage.
from The Financial Times
Lessons For Obama From Ted Kennedy's Noble Flops
by Matt Miller
Edward Kennedy fought to expand health coverage for 40 years, yet millions more Americans lack insurance today than when he started, and bankruptcy due to medical bills has become a uniquely American shame.
The senator for Massachusetts, who died last month, fought perenially to raise the minimum wage, but that wage is lower today as a percentage of average hourly earnings in the US than in 1970. Kennedy also fought to improve schools in impoverished neighbourhoods. Yet today, among advanced nations, 17 boast higher student achievement than in the US alongside test scores less correlated with a child's socio-economic status.
For all Kennedy's efforts, in other words, the fabled "land of opportunity" now offers its citizens a smaller chance of moving up from their economic status at birth than do France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada and Germany.
These observations are not meant to be churlish or in bad taste; Senator Kennedy has rightly been hailed as a passionate voice for the voiceless and a master of the legislative process. But any assessment of his legacy is incomplete if it fails to ask why American liberalism's modern icon proved so ineffective in persuading his country to share his vision.
This is not a matter of abstract interest. President Barack Obama stands little chance of succeeding in the coming healthcare endgame without understanding why, for all his passion, Kennedy could not make the sale. No man can reverse the tides of history, perhaps, but it was not inevitable that American politics would lurch so far to the right over the course of Kennedy's career. The US economy more than doubled in real terms between 1970 and 2008. Why wasn't America inclined to devote a portion of this bounty to mend the problems Kennedy identified, instead of allowing many of them to worsen?
There is no single answer. But one reason was the sense among voters that liberals tended to worry more about the poor than about the struggling middle class. This same sentiment now threatens Mr Obama's health reform.
"We have to do better at making this issue a moral imperative," Tom Daschle, former Senate majority leader (and Obama confidante) told the New York Times Magazine last month. "This in many respects is the civil rights battle of the early part of this century." But middle-class voters do not see healthcare as a "civil rights issue" - a cause in which they should enlist to bring justice to others. With soaring premiums and shrinking and precarious coverage, the 85 per cent of Americans who have health insurance see reform as a matter of economic security for their families.
Unfortunately, the American left has for years defined the issue predominantly as a matter of ending the scandal of the uninsured. They have misled the public with the incoherent claim that expanding coverage to 50m uninsured Americans would be a way to save money.
The Democratic argument has failed to emphasise how health reform can deepen the economic security (anmd improve the health status) of the middle class. Yes, one part of that argument is to ensure that no American in the 21st century goes without coverage. But the liberal instinct - to focus first on the neediest in ways that lead squeezed middle-income voters to conclude liberals want to take their hard-earned money and spend it on someone else - helps explain why Kennedy-style politics never prevailed.
Democrats need to frame their goals as inclusive measures to promote security and opportunity in a global economy - improving the life chances of society's most luckless but also bolstering the security and prospects of America's vast middle class. This is also the only way to persuade average Americans to pay for such policies, which eventually they must.
The White House is scrambling to repair its argument on healthcare to win over the middle class. But similar cases and policies must be framed if Democrats are to build on Kennedy's noble failures and make real headway on schools, wages and more.
This demands a new way of thinking. It took an act of imagination for a son of wealth and privilege such as Edward M. ?Kennedy to devote his life to helping those who had little. It will take another act of imagination for liberals to fulfill Kennedy's dreams by aligning them more closely with middle-class imperatives in a global age.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Wither health reform
September 13, 2009 - News Analysis - by Robert Pear
Public Option Fades From Debate Over Health Care
WASHINGTON — It was just one line in a campaign manifesto, and it hardly seemed the most significant or contentious. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he would “establish a new public insurance program” alongside private health care plans.
That proposal took on a life of its own, but it now appears to be dying, a victim of an ineffectual White House strategy, the president’s failure to argue passionately for the “public option” and all-out opposition by the insurance industry and much of the health care industry.
Six months ago the President was cruising, the Democrats fully in power. Press coverage was constant and favorable. Then came the business of governing, and the Administration seems to have stumbled badly.
In the campaign, Mr. Obama said the public plan would compete with private insurers on the price and quality of care, thus benefiting consumers. What Mr. Obama did not foresee is that, to some people on the right and the left, it would become the most important issue in the debate over health care, touching off a battle over the role of government in one of the nation’s biggest, fastest-growing industries.
Once in office Mr. Obama and his advisers have sent conflicting signals about how critical a government-run health plan would be. He prefers a public plan but is open to other ideas. Dancing around the issue for eight months, Mr. Obama has seemed, at various times, pragmatic, flexible or indecisive.
It is difficult to tell whether he is being flexible or indecisive.
“I just want to figure out what works,” Mr. Obama said in March at a White House forum. If he could drive down health costs and expand coverage “entirely through the market,” he said, “I’d be happy to do it that way.” And “if there was a way of doing it that involved more government regulation and involvement, I’m happy to do it that way, as well,” he added.
Flexible.
Champions of the public plan said it could save money by using Medicare rates and fee schedules to pay hospitals and doctors. In a book last year, one of Mr. Obama’s top advisers, former Senator Tom Daschle, said consumers should have the option of enrolling in “a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare, a proven and popular program.”
Losing Daschle apparently has hurt; yet that he did not foresee the problems he faced seems asinine.
That is exactly what worries health care providers, who say Medicare pays them less than market rates paid by private insurers. And they have pressed their concerns on Capitol Hill with a small army of lobbyists. Conservatives have another concern. They see the public option as a step toward a single-payer system in which the government would pay most of the nation’s health care bill and could supplant private insurers.
European style socialism. Canadian style?
“A public plan is essentially a stalking horse for a single-payer plan,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire. “It is more than the camel’s nose under the tent. It is the camel’s neck, and probably front legs, under the tent. There is no way the private sector will be able to compete.”
In trying to answer this charge, Democrats feel torn. Mr. Obama and many Democrats deny that they want to drive private insurers from the market. But others embrace the ultimate goal of “Medicare for all.”
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which supports Mr. Obama and the public option, has long supported a single-payer system. In a memorandum to union leaders last year, Gerald W. McEntee, president of the 1.6-million-member federation, said a public plan would “create a competitive check on the private market and build both public support and the infrastructure for a single-payer system.”
Then in April, Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, said insurers were right to fear that a public plan could “put the private insurance industry out of business.” That might happen because of “the superiority of the public health care option,” said Ms. Schakowsky, one of 86 co-sponsors of a bill to establish a single-payer system.
Superiority? Government? Please. Government involvement is often not a panacea, but additional bureaucracy.
Such comments provided new ammunition to Republicans already worried about the costly commitments undertaken by the federal government to stave off an economic collapse.
Staving off economic collapse cost too much? What would have been the alternative?
Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, voiced this sense of bailout fatigue in June when he said, “We have the takeover of the auto companies and banks and A.I.G. and student loans — and now health care.”
Banks have not been taken over, though surely bailed out.
In battering the proposal for a public option, Republicans have made effective use of estimates by the Lewin Group, a consulting concern, which said that more than 100 million people might sign up for the government-run insurance plan. By contrast, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 11 million to 12 million people might enroll.
Citing the numbers that suit them is a time-honored practice of not just politicians. As for this Lewin Group, there is this nugget on one of their webpages: “[The Lewin Group] has a comprehensive knowledge about…issues and key players and experts in the field.” FEDERAL AGENCY
Federal agency? Which one? And what is the full quote?
Mr. Obama cited the lower estimate in a speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, to buttress his assertion that fears of a public plan were overblown. “We believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up,” Mr. Obama said. But a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, predicted that over time “more and more people will select the public option.” If only 5 percent of people will enroll, she asked, “Why are the private insurance companies so worried?”
See Senator Judd's comments about horses and camels.
The different estimates by Lewin and the Congressional Budget Office are based on different assumptions about who would be permitted to enroll in the public plan — workers in all companies or just those in smaller businesses.
Many people who cite studies by the Lewin Group do not know it is a unit of Ingenix, a wholly owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth, one of the nation’s largest insurers. John F. Sheils, a vice president of the Lewin Group, said the parent company had no influence over its research.
Right. That's credible.
Momentum for the public option has waned, in part, because senators have been focusing on an alternative: nonprofit member-owned insurance cooperatives. Apart from the question of whether co-ops would be workable or effective, they provide a politically convenient middle ground for centrists. With no immediate prospect of getting the votes for a public option in the Senate, some liberals have said they too are willing to consider the idea — if it enables them to pass a bill, and if the co-ops are strong enough to put competitive pressure on insurance companies.
Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, who floated the idea in early June, said co-ops would accomplish “much of what those who want a public option are calling for — something to compete with private for-profit insurance companies.” At the same time, Mr. Conrad said, co-ops address Republican concerns because they are not controlled by the government.
Liberal Democrats are not giving up. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said the president and Senate Democratic leaders had not made a serious effort to round up votes for a public option. If they did, he said, it could pass.
Could it be done?
While the White House has struggled to define its position, insurance companies have never wavered. Starting two weeks after the 2008 election, they have said they would accept greater federal regulation of their market practices if Congress also required everyone to have health insurance.
These may have been tactical concessions, to abate public wrath, but they were well received in Congress. While making these offers, the industry conserved its resources for the bigger battle over a public option.
The industry had its strategy ready, something all companies agreed to; such a business practice would be an illegal collusion.
Public Option Fades From Debate Over Health Care
WASHINGTON — It was just one line in a campaign manifesto, and it hardly seemed the most significant or contentious. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he would “establish a new public insurance program” alongside private health care plans.
That proposal took on a life of its own, but it now appears to be dying, a victim of an ineffectual White House strategy, the president’s failure to argue passionately for the “public option” and all-out opposition by the insurance industry and much of the health care industry.
Six months ago the President was cruising, the Democrats fully in power. Press coverage was constant and favorable. Then came the business of governing, and the Administration seems to have stumbled badly.
In the campaign, Mr. Obama said the public plan would compete with private insurers on the price and quality of care, thus benefiting consumers. What Mr. Obama did not foresee is that, to some people on the right and the left, it would become the most important issue in the debate over health care, touching off a battle over the role of government in one of the nation’s biggest, fastest-growing industries.
Once in office Mr. Obama and his advisers have sent conflicting signals about how critical a government-run health plan would be. He prefers a public plan but is open to other ideas. Dancing around the issue for eight months, Mr. Obama has seemed, at various times, pragmatic, flexible or indecisive.
It is difficult to tell whether he is being flexible or indecisive.
“I just want to figure out what works,” Mr. Obama said in March at a White House forum. If he could drive down health costs and expand coverage “entirely through the market,” he said, “I’d be happy to do it that way.” And “if there was a way of doing it that involved more government regulation and involvement, I’m happy to do it that way, as well,” he added.
Flexible.
Champions of the public plan said it could save money by using Medicare rates and fee schedules to pay hospitals and doctors. In a book last year, one of Mr. Obama’s top advisers, former Senator Tom Daschle, said consumers should have the option of enrolling in “a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare, a proven and popular program.”
Losing Daschle apparently has hurt; yet that he did not foresee the problems he faced seems asinine.
That is exactly what worries health care providers, who say Medicare pays them less than market rates paid by private insurers. And they have pressed their concerns on Capitol Hill with a small army of lobbyists. Conservatives have another concern. They see the public option as a step toward a single-payer system in which the government would pay most of the nation’s health care bill and could supplant private insurers.
European style socialism. Canadian style?
“A public plan is essentially a stalking horse for a single-payer plan,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire. “It is more than the camel’s nose under the tent. It is the camel’s neck, and probably front legs, under the tent. There is no way the private sector will be able to compete.”
In trying to answer this charge, Democrats feel torn. Mr. Obama and many Democrats deny that they want to drive private insurers from the market. But others embrace the ultimate goal of “Medicare for all.”
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which supports Mr. Obama and the public option, has long supported a single-payer system. In a memorandum to union leaders last year, Gerald W. McEntee, president of the 1.6-million-member federation, said a public plan would “create a competitive check on the private market and build both public support and the infrastructure for a single-payer system.”
Then in April, Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, said insurers were right to fear that a public plan could “put the private insurance industry out of business.” That might happen because of “the superiority of the public health care option,” said Ms. Schakowsky, one of 86 co-sponsors of a bill to establish a single-payer system.
Superiority? Government? Please. Government involvement is often not a panacea, but additional bureaucracy.
Such comments provided new ammunition to Republicans already worried about the costly commitments undertaken by the federal government to stave off an economic collapse.
Staving off economic collapse cost too much? What would have been the alternative?
Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, voiced this sense of bailout fatigue in June when he said, “We have the takeover of the auto companies and banks and A.I.G. and student loans — and now health care.”
Banks have not been taken over, though surely bailed out.
In battering the proposal for a public option, Republicans have made effective use of estimates by the Lewin Group, a consulting concern, which said that more than 100 million people might sign up for the government-run insurance plan. By contrast, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 11 million to 12 million people might enroll.
Citing the numbers that suit them is a time-honored practice of not just politicians. As for this Lewin Group, there is this nugget on one of their webpages: “[The Lewin Group] has a comprehensive knowledge about…issues and key players and experts in the field.” FEDERAL AGENCY
Federal agency? Which one? And what is the full quote?
Mr. Obama cited the lower estimate in a speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, to buttress his assertion that fears of a public plan were overblown. “We believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up,” Mr. Obama said. But a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, predicted that over time “more and more people will select the public option.” If only 5 percent of people will enroll, she asked, “Why are the private insurance companies so worried?”
See Senator Judd's comments about horses and camels.
The different estimates by Lewin and the Congressional Budget Office are based on different assumptions about who would be permitted to enroll in the public plan — workers in all companies or just those in smaller businesses.
Many people who cite studies by the Lewin Group do not know it is a unit of Ingenix, a wholly owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth, one of the nation’s largest insurers. John F. Sheils, a vice president of the Lewin Group, said the parent company had no influence over its research.
Right. That's credible.
Momentum for the public option has waned, in part, because senators have been focusing on an alternative: nonprofit member-owned insurance cooperatives. Apart from the question of whether co-ops would be workable or effective, they provide a politically convenient middle ground for centrists. With no immediate prospect of getting the votes for a public option in the Senate, some liberals have said they too are willing to consider the idea — if it enables them to pass a bill, and if the co-ops are strong enough to put competitive pressure on insurance companies.
Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, who floated the idea in early June, said co-ops would accomplish “much of what those who want a public option are calling for — something to compete with private for-profit insurance companies.” At the same time, Mr. Conrad said, co-ops address Republican concerns because they are not controlled by the government.
Liberal Democrats are not giving up. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said the president and Senate Democratic leaders had not made a serious effort to round up votes for a public option. If they did, he said, it could pass.
Could it be done?
While the White House has struggled to define its position, insurance companies have never wavered. Starting two weeks after the 2008 election, they have said they would accept greater federal regulation of their market practices if Congress also required everyone to have health insurance.
These may have been tactical concessions, to abate public wrath, but they were well received in Congress. While making these offers, the industry conserved its resources for the bigger battle over a public option.
The industry had its strategy ready, something all companies agreed to; such a business practice would be an illegal collusion.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Ike’s Other Warning
An interesting riff on President Eisenhower.
This item galls me, however: After enduring Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who had smeared his old colleague Gen. George C. Marshall as a Communist sympathizer, and having guarded the Republican Party against the newly emergent radical right John Birch Society, which labeled him and much of his cabinet Soviet agents, the president perhaps welcomed the opportunity to expound on his vision of the open society.
Ike endured McCarthy? He didn't have the guts to oppose him, nor the decency and loyalty to defend General Marshall.
This item galls me, however: After enduring Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who had smeared his old colleague Gen. George C. Marshall as a Communist sympathizer, and having guarded the Republican Party against the newly emergent radical right John Birch Society, which labeled him and much of his cabinet Soviet agents, the president perhaps welcomed the opportunity to expound on his vision of the open society.
Ike endured McCarthy? He didn't have the guts to oppose him, nor the decency and loyalty to defend General Marshall.
Monday, August 24, 2009
All the President's zombies
August 24, 2009 - Op-Ed Columnist
All the President’s Zombies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The debate over the “public option” in health care has been dismaying in many ways. Perhaps the most depressing aspect for progressives, however, has been the extent to which opponents of greater choice in health care have gained traction — in Congress, if not with the broader public — simply by repeating, over and over again, that the public option would be, horrors, a government program.
Socialism! Nazism!
Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good.
Yeah, we sure learned that lesson. Let the free market reign, then, when it gets in trouble, and it pleads for help, don't get in its way. Cut taxes. Let capitalism work. So say the Republicans.
Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it. It turns out, however, to be a zombie doctrine: even though it should be dead, it keeps on coming.
Hell, even Democrats invoke Regan's memory now, even if they think his policies a failure and his reign a disaster: too many people idolize the Gipper to let the right wing monopolize his memory.
Let’s talk for a moment about why the age of Reagan should be over. First of all, even before the current crisis Reaganomics had failed to deliver what it promised. Remember how lower taxes on high incomes and deregulation that unleashed the “magic of the marketplace” were supposed to lead to dramatically better outcomes for everyone? Well, it didn’t happen.
Yet even the people hurt by Reaganomics want the Democrats to cut taxes for the rich, to allow corporations to hold sway over the economy, and to keep government out of everything (except for their favorite tax loopholes, mortgage interest deduction chief among many).
To be sure, the wealthy benefited enormously: the real incomes of the top .01 percent of Americans rose sevenfold between 1980 and 2007. But the real income of the median family rose only 22 percent, less than a third its growth over the previous 27 years.
27 years of Reagan (8), Bush 41 (4), Clinton (8) and Bush 43 (8).
Moreover, most of whatever gains ordinary Americans achieved came during the Clinton years. President George W. Bush, who had the distinction of being the first Reaganite president to also have a fully Republican Congress, also had the distinction of presiding over the first administration since Herbert Hoover in which the typical family failed to see any significant income gains.
But he was a good ole Texas boy (by way of Groton and Yale, but never mind).
And then there’s the small matter of the worst recession since the 1930s.
An inconvenient detail the Democrats and liberals bring up because they hate America and want to give aid and comfort to its enemies.
There’s a lot to be said about the financial disaster of the last two years, but the short version is simple: politicians in the thrall of Reaganite ideology dismantled the New Deal regulations that had prevented banking crises for half a century, believing that financial markets could take care of themselves. The effect was to make the financial system vulnerable to a 1930s-style crisis — and the crisis came.
Clinton deregulated with a vengeance, too.
“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. “We know now that it is bad economics.” And last year we learned that lesson all over again.
Socialist, that Roosevelt.
Or did we? The astonishing thing about the current political scene is the extent to which nothing has changed.
And now the right wing is screaming socialism, painting Hitler moustaches on the President, and scaring the hell out of the Democrats, who can not get their stuff together long enough to pass some legislation. Not yet, anyway.
The debate over the public option has, as I said, been depressing in its inanity. Opponents of the option — not just Republicans, but Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad and Senator Ben Nelson — have offered no coherent arguments against it. Mr. Nelson has warned ominously that if the option were available, Americans would choose it over private insurance — which he treats as a self-evidently bad thing, rather than as what should happen if the government plan was, in fact, better than what private insurers offer.
The sky might fall.
But it’s much the same on other fronts. Efforts to strengthen bank regulation appear to be losing steam, as opponents of reform declare that more regulation would lead to less financial innovation — this just months after the wonders of innovation brought our financial system to the edge of collapse, a collapse that was averted only with huge infusions of taxpayer funds.
Lobbying spending has been furious.
So why won’t these zombie ideas die?
Part of the answer is that there’s a lot of money behind them. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” said Upton Sinclair, “when his salary” — or, I would add, his campaign contributions — “depend upon his not understanding it.” In particular, vast amounts of insurance industry money have been flowing to obstructionist Democrats like Mr. Nelson and Senator Max Baucus, whose Gang of Six negotiations have been a crucial roadblock to legislation.
Or on pushing the lies and distortions that allow hsi benefactors to reap in great profits.
But some of the blame also must rest with President Obama, who famously praised Reagan during the Democratic primary, and hasn’t used the bully pulpit to confront government-is-bad fundamentalism. That’s ironic, in a way, since a large part of what made Reagan so effective, for better or for worse, was the fact that he sought to change America’s thinking as well as its tax code.
Thus far, the effort seems lackluster, though it may yet prove to be too early to call.
How will this all work out? I don’t know. But it’s hard to avoid the sense that a crucial opportunity is being missed, that we’re at what should be a turning point but are failing to make the turn.
September and October will prove the President's mettle: will he be able to knock heads together and have legislation passed? We'll see.
All the President’s Zombies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The debate over the “public option” in health care has been dismaying in many ways. Perhaps the most depressing aspect for progressives, however, has been the extent to which opponents of greater choice in health care have gained traction — in Congress, if not with the broader public — simply by repeating, over and over again, that the public option would be, horrors, a government program.
Socialism! Nazism!
Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good.
Yeah, we sure learned that lesson. Let the free market reign, then, when it gets in trouble, and it pleads for help, don't get in its way. Cut taxes. Let capitalism work. So say the Republicans.
Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it. It turns out, however, to be a zombie doctrine: even though it should be dead, it keeps on coming.
Hell, even Democrats invoke Regan's memory now, even if they think his policies a failure and his reign a disaster: too many people idolize the Gipper to let the right wing monopolize his memory.
Let’s talk for a moment about why the age of Reagan should be over. First of all, even before the current crisis Reaganomics had failed to deliver what it promised. Remember how lower taxes on high incomes and deregulation that unleashed the “magic of the marketplace” were supposed to lead to dramatically better outcomes for everyone? Well, it didn’t happen.
Yet even the people hurt by Reaganomics want the Democrats to cut taxes for the rich, to allow corporations to hold sway over the economy, and to keep government out of everything (except for their favorite tax loopholes, mortgage interest deduction chief among many).
To be sure, the wealthy benefited enormously: the real incomes of the top .01 percent of Americans rose sevenfold between 1980 and 2007. But the real income of the median family rose only 22 percent, less than a third its growth over the previous 27 years.
27 years of Reagan (8), Bush 41 (4), Clinton (8) and Bush 43 (8).
Moreover, most of whatever gains ordinary Americans achieved came during the Clinton years. President George W. Bush, who had the distinction of being the first Reaganite president to also have a fully Republican Congress, also had the distinction of presiding over the first administration since Herbert Hoover in which the typical family failed to see any significant income gains.
But he was a good ole Texas boy (by way of Groton and Yale, but never mind).
And then there’s the small matter of the worst recession since the 1930s.
An inconvenient detail the Democrats and liberals bring up because they hate America and want to give aid and comfort to its enemies.
There’s a lot to be said about the financial disaster of the last two years, but the short version is simple: politicians in the thrall of Reaganite ideology dismantled the New Deal regulations that had prevented banking crises for half a century, believing that financial markets could take care of themselves. The effect was to make the financial system vulnerable to a 1930s-style crisis — and the crisis came.
Clinton deregulated with a vengeance, too.
“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. “We know now that it is bad economics.” And last year we learned that lesson all over again.
Socialist, that Roosevelt.
Or did we? The astonishing thing about the current political scene is the extent to which nothing has changed.
And now the right wing is screaming socialism, painting Hitler moustaches on the President, and scaring the hell out of the Democrats, who can not get their stuff together long enough to pass some legislation. Not yet, anyway.
The debate over the public option has, as I said, been depressing in its inanity. Opponents of the option — not just Republicans, but Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad and Senator Ben Nelson — have offered no coherent arguments against it. Mr. Nelson has warned ominously that if the option were available, Americans would choose it over private insurance — which he treats as a self-evidently bad thing, rather than as what should happen if the government plan was, in fact, better than what private insurers offer.
The sky might fall.
But it’s much the same on other fronts. Efforts to strengthen bank regulation appear to be losing steam, as opponents of reform declare that more regulation would lead to less financial innovation — this just months after the wonders of innovation brought our financial system to the edge of collapse, a collapse that was averted only with huge infusions of taxpayer funds.
Lobbying spending has been furious.
So why won’t these zombie ideas die?
Part of the answer is that there’s a lot of money behind them. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” said Upton Sinclair, “when his salary” — or, I would add, his campaign contributions — “depend upon his not understanding it.” In particular, vast amounts of insurance industry money have been flowing to obstructionist Democrats like Mr. Nelson and Senator Max Baucus, whose Gang of Six negotiations have been a crucial roadblock to legislation.
Or on pushing the lies and distortions that allow hsi benefactors to reap in great profits.
But some of the blame also must rest with President Obama, who famously praised Reagan during the Democratic primary, and hasn’t used the bully pulpit to confront government-is-bad fundamentalism. That’s ironic, in a way, since a large part of what made Reagan so effective, for better or for worse, was the fact that he sought to change America’s thinking as well as its tax code.
Thus far, the effort seems lackluster, though it may yet prove to be too early to call.
How will this all work out? I don’t know. But it’s hard to avoid the sense that a crucial opportunity is being missed, that we’re at what should be a turning point but are failing to make the turn.
September and October will prove the President's mettle: will he be able to knock heads together and have legislation passed? We'll see.
Friday, August 14, 2009
From Hookers to Health Care
Sen. David Vitter seemed finished after his brush with the D.C. Madam, but his new ploy to provoke the Obama-hating town-hall mobs just might get him re-elected.
Socialism? Can anybody spell Medicare? Social Security?
ObamaCare? Legislation is being crafted in Congress, not by the black guy (well, not openly, anyway, something those placard-holders may have trouble grasping.)
While Democratic members of Congress confront indignant town-hall crowds opposed to President Barack Obama’s health-care policies, Republican Sen. David Vitter is enjoying a Louisiana love fest. Vitter is barnstorming through the Bayou backwoods, hosting town-halls meetings before packed houses of ferociously anti-Obama audiences. They come to praise rather than shout. Billed as public forums to discuss Obama’s health-care proposals, or what Vitter has derisively referred to as “Obamacare,” the pre-screened events appear to be functioning effectively as surrogate campaign rallies for the scandal-scarred senator’s 2010 reelection bid.
Black health care, is perhaps what the Senator and his supporters are discussing.
"Please know that this and any other angry mob is welcome at my town-hall meetings whenever you want to come,” Vitter declared, bringing the audience to its feet with a raucous ovation. In the back of the chapel, an elderly woman waved a placard reading, “Send Obama & congress back to USSR.”
Whip up the natives. The USSR? Perhaps the news has not yet reached the Louisiana backwoods, but the Soviet Empire is no more.
Many of those attending Vitter’s town halls have been shepherded to the events by local chapters of TeaPartyPatriots.org, a supposedly grassroots network of national activists that happens to “partner” with the health-care and insurance industry-funded lobbying firm Freedom Works, which has directed angry mobs to Democratic events. At a town-hall meeting on August 10 in Jefferson Parish, many local constituents were reportedly turned away while Tea Party activists were allowed to enter. When the event concluded, Vitter rushed out of the back door and away from the press and his constituents, guarded by a phalanx of police officers.
Why didn't he invite the mob over to his place for some iced tea?
Vitter has good reason to fear public scrutiny. Had he not pre-screened his audiences, some wily constituent might have asked the senator to address his affair with Wendy Cortez, a high-priced New Orleans escort, or asked how his name showed up on the client list of Jeanne Palfrey, the so-called DC Madam, who killed herself in May 2008 after being convicted of money laundering. The constituent could have framed the question in terms of the health-care debate by asking Vitter why he reportedly wore a condom when he visited Cortez but subsequently tried to introduce an amendment barring health-care providers that offer free STD testing and contraception from receiving federal funds.
Well, he is white, at least.
Socialism? Can anybody spell Medicare? Social Security?
ObamaCare? Legislation is being crafted in Congress, not by the black guy (well, not openly, anyway, something those placard-holders may have trouble grasping.)
While Democratic members of Congress confront indignant town-hall crowds opposed to President Barack Obama’s health-care policies, Republican Sen. David Vitter is enjoying a Louisiana love fest. Vitter is barnstorming through the Bayou backwoods, hosting town-halls meetings before packed houses of ferociously anti-Obama audiences. They come to praise rather than shout. Billed as public forums to discuss Obama’s health-care proposals, or what Vitter has derisively referred to as “Obamacare,” the pre-screened events appear to be functioning effectively as surrogate campaign rallies for the scandal-scarred senator’s 2010 reelection bid.
Black health care, is perhaps what the Senator and his supporters are discussing.
"Please know that this and any other angry mob is welcome at my town-hall meetings whenever you want to come,” Vitter declared, bringing the audience to its feet with a raucous ovation. In the back of the chapel, an elderly woman waved a placard reading, “Send Obama & congress back to USSR.”
Whip up the natives. The USSR? Perhaps the news has not yet reached the Louisiana backwoods, but the Soviet Empire is no more.
Many of those attending Vitter’s town halls have been shepherded to the events by local chapters of TeaPartyPatriots.org, a supposedly grassroots network of national activists that happens to “partner” with the health-care and insurance industry-funded lobbying firm Freedom Works, which has directed angry mobs to Democratic events. At a town-hall meeting on August 10 in Jefferson Parish, many local constituents were reportedly turned away while Tea Party activists were allowed to enter. When the event concluded, Vitter rushed out of the back door and away from the press and his constituents, guarded by a phalanx of police officers.
Why didn't he invite the mob over to his place for some iced tea?
Vitter has good reason to fear public scrutiny. Had he not pre-screened his audiences, some wily constituent might have asked the senator to address his affair with Wendy Cortez, a high-priced New Orleans escort, or asked how his name showed up on the client list of Jeanne Palfrey, the so-called DC Madam, who killed herself in May 2008 after being convicted of money laundering. The constituent could have framed the question in terms of the health-care debate by asking Vitter why he reportedly wore a condom when he visited Cortez but subsequently tried to introduce an amendment barring health-care providers that offer free STD testing and contraception from receiving federal funds.
Well, he is white, at least.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Obama takes health risks
Members of the Senate Democratic leadership and their aides leaving the White House last week after meeting with President Obama on health care legislation.
In pursuing his proposed overhaul of the health care system, President Obama has consistently presented himself as aloof from the legislative fray, merely offering broad principles. Prominent among them is the creation of a strong, government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers and press for lower costs.
Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Obama and his advisers have been quite active, sometimes negotiating deals with a degree of cold-eyed political realism potentially at odds with the president’s rhetoric.
Cold-eyed politics? What do people think Barack Obama is? He is a politician, and how good of one is proven by his being president. He is not the evil socialist right-wingers want their zealot legions to believe he is; nor is he the soft-hearted liberal that left-wingers are fretting he is not being. He is a moderate.
Last month, for example, hospital officials were poised to appear at the White House to announce a deal limiting their industry’s share of the costs of the overhaul proposal when a wave of jitters swept through the group. Senator Max Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman and a party to the deal, had abruptly pulled out of the event. Was he backing away from his end of the deal?
Senator Baucus has emerged as a key player. Ted Kennedy's absence is part of the reason for that. Yet his position of influence in the health care debate is consistent with the President's strategy (or, perhaps better put, tactical approach): it will be Congress that will shape the legislation, not the Administration (openly, that is).
Not to worry, Jim Messina, deputy White House chief of staff, told the lobbyists, according to White House officials and lobbyists briefed on the call. The White House was standing behind the deal, Mr. Messina said, capping the industry’s costs at a maximum of $155 billion over 10 years in trade for its political support.
Trading support for money.
Some Democrats and industry lobbyists now argue that, in negotiating deals through Mr. Baucus’s panel with powerful health care interests, the White House was tacitly signaling as early as last spring that it might end up accepting something more modest than the government insurer the president has said he prefers.
He prefers; that is a key phrase. If, and I increasingly think that it will be when, the public option is negotiated away, he will say, words to the effect of, well, can't get everything we want, but we have started the process of reform.
The Finance Committee, for example, appears to be coalescing around the idea of nonprofit insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run plan. It is a proposal the health care industry prefers, but many liberal Democrats oppose, in both cases because cooperatives are likely to have less leverage over health care prices.
How much influence the White House has had in helping the process of coalescing is, and will remain, known behind closed doors. The coops will be easier to sell to moderates than a public plan, and will coopt the fire the right wing is fanning, that of creeping socialism.
Industry lobbyists and moderate Democrats in both chambers, though, argue that the White House’s actions behind the scenes show a recognition that the finance panel’s anticipated compromise is the most likely template for any final legislation.
Recognition? Methinks the WHite House has been more active than passive.
“The House has largely been a sideshow,” said Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a member of the so-called Blue Dog caucus of conservative Democrats. “The Senate Finance Committee is where it really matters. That’s the bottleneck.”
Members and staff of the four other committees say the White House has largely stayed on the sidelines. “They have been — what is a good way to put it? — available for consultation,” Mr. Cooper said.
What are they going to say in public?
Mr. Obama and his top aides have immersed themselves in the Senate Finance Committee process. The president talks to Mr. Baucus several times a week, people briefed on their conversations say. Mr. Obama has also held a few calls with the panel’s ranking Republican, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.
Ah, yes, Grassley, he of the "pulling the plug on grandma" infamy. Key player, but something of a schmuck.
Lobbyists for the drug and hospital industries say that, as early as June, White House officials directed them to work out cost-saving deals with Mr. Baucus’s committee. Drug industry lobbyists said they negotiated a deal to contribute $80 billion over 10 years toward the cost of an overhaul with Mr. Baucus, under White House supervision, before taking it to the president for final approval. House lawmakers have said they were caught by surprise when it was announced.
House lawmakers? The leadership? Rank-and-file members?
Hospital industry lobbyists, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the White House, say they negotiated their $155 billion in concessions with Mr. Baucus and the administration in tandem. House staff members were present, including for at least one White House meeting, but their role was peripheral, the lobbyists said.
That makes $235 billion of the about $1 trillion estimated needed funds to pay for the health plan that is bandied about as the to-be-legislation.
Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan paying Medicare rates — generally 80 percent of private sector rates — or controlled by the secretary of health and human services.
Hospital lobby is speaking confidently. Too early? October will bring the answer.
Mr. Emanuel and liberal Democrats argued that the White House had worked more closely with the Senate Finance Committee because it was stepping in to break up legislative logjams. In the same way, they said, Mr. Obama and Mr. Emanuel had personally interceded to resolve a last-minute revolt by conservative House Democrats that threatened to derail a bill in the energy and commerce panel in July.
Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said Mr. Obama had assured House members that he did not intend to let the Senate Finance Committee determine the final bill.
It will have to be negotiated in conference. Will any one party have a weighted hand?
“This is going to be a genuine conference with give and take,” Mr. Waxman said. He added: “The president has said he wants a public option to keep everybody honest. He hasn’t said he wants a co-op as a public option.”
Negotiations will determine the final legislation. Some details that are now being argued about might well disappear. That's how laws are made.
In pursuing his proposed overhaul of the health care system, President Obama has consistently presented himself as aloof from the legislative fray, merely offering broad principles. Prominent among them is the creation of a strong, government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers and press for lower costs.
Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Obama and his advisers have been quite active, sometimes negotiating deals with a degree of cold-eyed political realism potentially at odds with the president’s rhetoric.
Cold-eyed politics? What do people think Barack Obama is? He is a politician, and how good of one is proven by his being president. He is not the evil socialist right-wingers want their zealot legions to believe he is; nor is he the soft-hearted liberal that left-wingers are fretting he is not being. He is a moderate.
Last month, for example, hospital officials were poised to appear at the White House to announce a deal limiting their industry’s share of the costs of the overhaul proposal when a wave of jitters swept through the group. Senator Max Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman and a party to the deal, had abruptly pulled out of the event. Was he backing away from his end of the deal?
Senator Baucus has emerged as a key player. Ted Kennedy's absence is part of the reason for that. Yet his position of influence in the health care debate is consistent with the President's strategy (or, perhaps better put, tactical approach): it will be Congress that will shape the legislation, not the Administration (openly, that is).
Not to worry, Jim Messina, deputy White House chief of staff, told the lobbyists, according to White House officials and lobbyists briefed on the call. The White House was standing behind the deal, Mr. Messina said, capping the industry’s costs at a maximum of $155 billion over 10 years in trade for its political support.
Trading support for money.
Some Democrats and industry lobbyists now argue that, in negotiating deals through Mr. Baucus’s panel with powerful health care interests, the White House was tacitly signaling as early as last spring that it might end up accepting something more modest than the government insurer the president has said he prefers.
He prefers; that is a key phrase. If, and I increasingly think that it will be when, the public option is negotiated away, he will say, words to the effect of, well, can't get everything we want, but we have started the process of reform.
The Finance Committee, for example, appears to be coalescing around the idea of nonprofit insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run plan. It is a proposal the health care industry prefers, but many liberal Democrats oppose, in both cases because cooperatives are likely to have less leverage over health care prices.
How much influence the White House has had in helping the process of coalescing is, and will remain, known behind closed doors. The coops will be easier to sell to moderates than a public plan, and will coopt the fire the right wing is fanning, that of creeping socialism.
Industry lobbyists and moderate Democrats in both chambers, though, argue that the White House’s actions behind the scenes show a recognition that the finance panel’s anticipated compromise is the most likely template for any final legislation.
Recognition? Methinks the WHite House has been more active than passive.
“The House has largely been a sideshow,” said Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a member of the so-called Blue Dog caucus of conservative Democrats. “The Senate Finance Committee is where it really matters. That’s the bottleneck.”
Members and staff of the four other committees say the White House has largely stayed on the sidelines. “They have been — what is a good way to put it? — available for consultation,” Mr. Cooper said.
What are they going to say in public?
Mr. Obama and his top aides have immersed themselves in the Senate Finance Committee process. The president talks to Mr. Baucus several times a week, people briefed on their conversations say. Mr. Obama has also held a few calls with the panel’s ranking Republican, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.
Ah, yes, Grassley, he of the "pulling the plug on grandma" infamy. Key player, but something of a schmuck.
Lobbyists for the drug and hospital industries say that, as early as June, White House officials directed them to work out cost-saving deals with Mr. Baucus’s committee. Drug industry lobbyists said they negotiated a deal to contribute $80 billion over 10 years toward the cost of an overhaul with Mr. Baucus, under White House supervision, before taking it to the president for final approval. House lawmakers have said they were caught by surprise when it was announced.
House lawmakers? The leadership? Rank-and-file members?
Hospital industry lobbyists, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the White House, say they negotiated their $155 billion in concessions with Mr. Baucus and the administration in tandem. House staff members were present, including for at least one White House meeting, but their role was peripheral, the lobbyists said.
That makes $235 billion of the about $1 trillion estimated needed funds to pay for the health plan that is bandied about as the to-be-legislation.
Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan paying Medicare rates — generally 80 percent of private sector rates — or controlled by the secretary of health and human services.
Hospital lobby is speaking confidently. Too early? October will bring the answer.
Mr. Emanuel and liberal Democrats argued that the White House had worked more closely with the Senate Finance Committee because it was stepping in to break up legislative logjams. In the same way, they said, Mr. Obama and Mr. Emanuel had personally interceded to resolve a last-minute revolt by conservative House Democrats that threatened to derail a bill in the energy and commerce panel in July.
Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said Mr. Obama had assured House members that he did not intend to let the Senate Finance Committee determine the final bill.
It will have to be negotiated in conference. Will any one party have a weighted hand?
“This is going to be a genuine conference with give and take,” Mr. Waxman said. He added: “The president has said he wants a public option to keep everybody honest. He hasn’t said he wants a co-op as a public option.”
Negotiations will determine the final legislation. Some details that are now being argued about might well disappear. That's how laws are made.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Polite Debate at Grassley's Iowa Town Halls
As Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) travels to town halls in his state, it seems conservative Iowans are either too polite to shout at him or really like their longtime senator, even as he has remains one of the few Republicans negotiating with President Obama and congressional Democrats on health care.
Maybe there are such a things as respect, listening, and consideration.
the questions suggest many of the people in attendance are conservatives, as several attacked President Obama for looking to increase vastly the role of the federal government in American lives, with one woman likening the new administration to Nazi Germany. They made charges that illegal immigrants could get health insurance, that the bill will raise taxes and that Obama's intention is to create a socialist country.
I just don't get these references to Nazism. My ancestors were killed by Nazis for being Jews, and I resent people bandying about the label to oppose legislation.
At the start of event, he gives a brief speech that carefully distances himself from Obama and puts him on the side of many of the conservatives in room, saying he opposes a government health insurance option because "I see government not as a competitor, but a predator." He notes he opposes any health insurance plan that will lead to "rationing" and says he will not back a bill other Republicans cannot embrace.
Smart; gain control of the pace and tone of the meeting.
He avoids mentioning his potential backing of so-called health-care cooperatives that some Republicans in Washington say would be akin to a government option.
Spin control.
"I trust him; he's an honest man," said Margaret Turk, a Republican who attended the town hall in Afton and applauded him at the end, even though she opposes the health-care reform effort.
At the same time, Iowans just might be less eager to yell and be rude. When one man in Afton asked Grassley why he was eager to change a health-care system that many Americans like, the senator started referring to a private conservation he had with a Democratic senator on Capitol Hill.
"Which one?" the man shouted.
"I can't tell you that," Grassley said.
"Why not?" the man snapped back.
"Because it was a private conservation," Grassley responded.
"Oh, okay," the man said, and let the senator finish.
Maybe there are such a things as respect, listening, and consideration.
the questions suggest many of the people in attendance are conservatives, as several attacked President Obama for looking to increase vastly the role of the federal government in American lives, with one woman likening the new administration to Nazi Germany. They made charges that illegal immigrants could get health insurance, that the bill will raise taxes and that Obama's intention is to create a socialist country.
I just don't get these references to Nazism. My ancestors were killed by Nazis for being Jews, and I resent people bandying about the label to oppose legislation.
At the start of event, he gives a brief speech that carefully distances himself from Obama and puts him on the side of many of the conservatives in room, saying he opposes a government health insurance option because "I see government not as a competitor, but a predator." He notes he opposes any health insurance plan that will lead to "rationing" and says he will not back a bill other Republicans cannot embrace.
Smart; gain control of the pace and tone of the meeting.
He avoids mentioning his potential backing of so-called health-care cooperatives that some Republicans in Washington say would be akin to a government option.
Spin control.
"I trust him; he's an honest man," said Margaret Turk, a Republican who attended the town hall in Afton and applauded him at the end, even though she opposes the health-care reform effort.
At the same time, Iowans just might be less eager to yell and be rude. When one man in Afton asked Grassley why he was eager to change a health-care system that many Americans like, the senator started referring to a private conservation he had with a Democratic senator on Capitol Hill.
"Which one?" the man shouted.
"I can't tell you that," Grassley said.
"Why not?" the man snapped back.
"Because it was a private conservation," Grassley responded.
"Oh, okay," the man said, and let the senator finish.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
The GOP Freak Show
Conservative radio talk-show host John Batchelor says the whack jobs disrupting health-care town halls confirm the Republican Party has become a cruise ship to the seventh grade.The sad-eyed Townhall Turfers now follow the saucer-eyed Birthers and the cranky Tea-Baggers as the latest political fad that the weakling Republicans not only cannot get away from but also cannot get enough of, like chocolate sauce on anything.
The Turfers are freakish, passionate, half-baked, dignified, defiant, rude, anarchistic, but they are not Republicans.
Well, they sure as hell aren't Democrats. Nor liberal. What does that leave?
Would that the Republicans were capable of such a vast right-wing conspiracy to rally and deploy growling scene-stealers with signage that is indifferent to paradox, “Stop Obama,” “Stop Socialism,” “Stop Fascism.” Those who have discovered these shadowy links of the nonsensically named “Conservatives for Patient Rights” to the infamous Swift Boaters’ latest awkward fantasy, “Tea Party Patriots Health Care Reform Committee,” serve less to enliven their suspicions than they do to prop up the spirits of the deracinated Republicans. Democrats are imagining a Republicanism that is ambulatory, omnipotent like the fabled days of the Brooks Brothers Brigade storming Dade County in the stolen election of 2000.
In the battles of spin, perceptions count more than reality. And to have these yahoos associated with anti-Obamaism and anti-reform helps the liberal side.
And what does the Republican Party provide the generally despairing and alienated American citizens who come out to the town halls? It answers shouts for help with teasing and cooing, the behavior of groupies with the language of quitters.
The GOP seems to have no strategy other than saying no and being disruptive.
With Boehner and Steele cheering like gamblers at a cockfight, with the tempestuous DNC joining in the food fight with both hands, the shabby, timid GOP is left exposed to the predations of the demagogues of talk. The usual cynics are outperforming in fear-mongering and self-promotion. Limbaugh swerved all over the road to combine the Turfers with his imagination of the younger chief executive ... Lou Dobbs is toothless in comparison to the Limbaugh bite, but Dobbs can gush like Bruno.
That's today's Republican Party: Michael Steele, who'll get dumped next year; Boehner, with his tan and yellow ties; and two broadcast demagogues. O, and the cheating Senator from Nevada and the cheating Governor of South Carolina. And ex-Governor Palin, who gives credence to the absurdity that the health care reform bills now in Congress
John McCain couldn't do it, for he had to solidify his right-wing support.
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