Conservative Comment on Passage of...
 

....health care insurance reform, from David Frum:


Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing
legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster.
Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s
expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about
November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate
goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare
bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this
debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now
comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to
conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our
overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by
mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information,
overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent
and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and
they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk
radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh
said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently
explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is
equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans
succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive
compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they
are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for
Sleepnumber beds.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if
Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes
could we muster to re-open the "doughnut hole" and charge seniors more
for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind
policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to
banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if
the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement,
and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
....

And the frosting on the cake? The incredibly horrid behavior of the
teabagging Republicans the last couple of weeks.





--


If the X-MimeOLE "header" doesn't say:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8)
Gecko/20100227 Thunderbird/3.0.3 (or higher)

then it isn't me, it's an ID spoofer.

Conservative Comment on Passage of...
 

On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:33:46 -0400, hk
wrote:


We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement,
and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
...

Even if it were true that the "we" followed the most radical voices,
would a few Republican votes for the health-care legislation have
reversed the defeat?

Conservative Comment on Passage of...
 

On 3/22/10 10:12 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:33:46 -0400,
wrote:


We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement,
and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
...

Even if it were true that the "we" followed the most radical voices,
would a few Republican votes for the health-care legislation have
reversed the defeat?


Had the Republicans actually been engaged in a process to improve health
care insurance and health care reform, there might have been a truly
bipartisan bill and a lot less rancor. The GOP paid lip service to
reform, but the reality is, the GOP leadership is doing everything it
can to obstruct and to make sure it does what it can to stymie Obama.

The other good thing is that fair-minded Americans have seen in the news
the last two weeks the teabaggers behaving in a vile fashion to a man
suffering from severe parkinson's, behaving in a vile fashion to elected
officials, and behaving in a vile fashion to immigrants. It was
important for fair-minded Americans to see these racist, pigish
teabaggers for what they are.

Conservative Comment on Passage of...
 

On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:22:00 -0400, hk
wrote:

On 3/22/10 10:12 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:33:46 -0400,
wrote:


We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement,
and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
...

Even if it were true that the "we" followed the most radical voices,
would a few Republican votes for the health-care legislation have
reversed the defeat?


Had the Republicans actually been engaged in a process to improve health
care insurance and health care reform, there might have been a truly
bipartisan bill and a lot less rancor. The GOP paid lip service to
reform, but the reality is, the GOP leadership is doing everything it
can to obstruct and to make sure it does what it can to stymie Obama.


Is that a problem if the GOP and its respective constituency consider
the bill to be an Über-Leviathon? I personally consider an aspect of
it to be an infringement of my personal liberty. Too, I've read of
several GOP submissions for health-care reform.

Conservative Comment on Passage of...
 

On 3/22/10 11:00 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:22:00 -0400,
wrote:

On 3/22/10 10:12 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:33:46 -0400,
wrote:


We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement,
and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
...

Even if it were true that the "we" followed the most radical voices,
would a few Republican votes for the health-care legislation have
reversed the defeat?


Had the Republicans actually been engaged in a process to improve health
care insurance and health care reform, there might have been a truly
bipartisan bill and a lot less rancor. The GOP paid lip service to
reform, but the reality is, the GOP leadership is doing everything it
can to obstruct and to make sure it does what it can to stymie Obama.


Is that a problem if the GOP and its respective constituency consider
the bill to be an Über-Leviathon? I personally consider an aspect of
it to be an infringement of my personal liberty. Too, I've read of
several GOP submissions for health-care reform.


The lack of tort reform, which the GOP sorta pushed for, is not driving
health insurance premiums up by 30-50 a year, nor is it keeping tens of
millions of Americans from having health insurance, nor is it preventing
millions of Americans from obtaining health insurance because of
pre-existing conditions, nor is it a factor in the donut hole for
prescriptions for seniors. And much more.

The GOP also pushed for insurers to be able to sell across state lines.
Many insurers do that through the federal employee program, but the GOP
was against extending that program to everyone.

What it boils down to is that the GOP solution was to do nothing, but to
pay lip service to the idea of health insurance/care reform. You only
have to see how the GOP leaders directed their fellow congresscritters
to understand that.

Conservative Comment on Passage of...
 

On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:33:46 -0400, hk
wrote:

...health care insurance reform, from David Frum:


Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing
legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster.
Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s
expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about
November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate
goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare
bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this
debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now
comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to
conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our
overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by
mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information,
overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent
and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and
they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk
radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh
said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently
explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is
equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans
succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive
compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they
are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for
Sleepnumber beds.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if
Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes
could we muster to re-open the "doughnut hole" and charge seniors more
for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind
policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to
banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if
the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement,
and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
...

And the frosting on the cake? The incredibly horrid behavior of the
teabagging Republicans the last couple of weeks.

Welcome to the modern Republian Party. It's a big, stupid tent.

Conservative Comment on Passage of...
 

hk wrote:
On 3/22/10 10:12 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:33:46 -0400,
wrote:


We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement,
and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
...

Even if it were true that the "we" followed the most radical voices,
would a few Republican votes for the health-care legislation have
reversed the defeat?


Had the Republicans actually been engaged in a process to improve health
care insurance and health care reform, there might have been a truly
bipartisan bill and a lot less rancor. The GOP paid lip service to
reform, but the reality is, the GOP leadership is doing everything it
can to obstruct and to make sure it does what it can to stymie Obama.

The other good thing is that fair-minded Americans have seen in the news
the last two weeks the teabaggers behaving in a vile fashion to a man
suffering from severe parkinson's, behaving in a vile fashion to elected
officials, and behaving in a vile fashion to immigrants. It was
important for fair-minded Americans to see these racist, pigish
teabaggers for what they are.
Yawn

Conservative Comment on Passage of...
 

On 3/22/10 12:47 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:33:46 -0400,
wrote:

...health care insurance reform, from David Frum:

My big problem with this legislation is it doesn't limit insurance
premiums at all and I bet your "october surprise" will be what the
2011 rates are going to be for those 300 million that do have
insurance.
That will be what drives the election.

Premium controls will be added. In fact, I suspect a number of items
will individually be added. It'll be interesting to see the Republicans
vote down all the individual measures to help Americans obtain and
retain insurance at good prices.

Conservative Comment on Passage of...
 

Conservative Comment on Passage of...
 

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:22:00 -0400, hk
wrote:

On 3/22/10 10:12 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:33:46 -0400,
wrote:


We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement,
and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
...

Even if it were true that the "we" followed the most radical voices,
would a few Republican votes for the health-care legislation have
reversed the defeat?


Had the Republicans actually been engaged in a process to improve health
care insurance and health care reform, there might have been a truly
bipartisan bill and a lot less rancor. The GOP paid lip service to
reform, but the reality is, the GOP leadership is doing everything it
can to obstruct and to make sure it does what it can to stymie Obama.


Is that a problem if the GOP and its respective constituency consider
the bill to be an Über-Leviathon? I personally consider an aspect of
it to be an infringement of my personal liberty. Too, I've read of
several GOP submissions for health-care reform.


But, I bet you have no problem with the Republicans trying to bad abortions,
because it isn't your "personal liberty."

--
Nom=de=Plume