Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory

Steve Benen finally understands the GOP "health care plan" and says publicly what I've been saying for months now: The GOP can never allow the Democrats' real health care reform to pass.

In 1993, Bill Kristol privately advised congressional Republicans to do whatever it took to "kill" the Clinton health care reform initiative. It wasn't that the policy proposal was a bad idea; it was that passage would help the Democratic Party for years to come. The GOP, he said, for the sake of its own future, couldn't compromise or negotiate with the majority.

And that's the trillion-dollar answer to the question of "Why are Republicans so against health care?" It's all politics to them. It always was. If the Democrats pass a real health care reform plan with a public option, the Republicans are in the wilderness for a generation more. Not only that, he explores the next obvious question: Why are conservative Democrats so eager to sink reform?

Republicans don't want to reform the health care system and don't want President Obama to be the president who finally delivers the overhaul Americans have been waiting for over the last several decades. The GOP has every possible reason to see this initiative fail, but that hasn't stopped some Democrats from a) insisting that Republican support for a reform effort they oppose is paramount; and b) making it easier to see their own party's efforts fail.

It occurs to me, then, that there's at least a possibility that "centrist" Democrats -- Blue Dogs, New Democrats, Lieberman, et al -- might not see failure as such a horrible option here. In other words, they may realize that coming up short on health care, letting this opportunity slip away, and hurting millions of Americans in the process may be devastating for the Democratic majority, but these same "centrist" Democrats may prefer a smaller majority, or perhaps even a GOP majority to "balance" the Democratic president. They may very well disagree with the party's leadership on most issues, and think the best course of action is taking away their power by undermining the party's agenda.

It seems odd that these "centrist" Democrats would forget the lessons of 1993 and 1994. But alternatively, are we sure they have forgotten those lessons, or have they learned those lessons all too well?

I have to believe it's the latter. The first part of it goes back to BooMan's excellent "60 votes means ConservaDems have nowhere to hide" theory.

So long as the Republicans had 41 votes in the Senate, the timid, vulnerable, conservative Democrats could get away with voting for progressive legislation that wouldn't pass and against progressive legislation that did. But now that the Democrats have sixty votes, every single bill the Democrats introduce should pass. Every nominee should be confirmed. And each Democrat that votes 'nay' on an issue is giving the Republicans the ability to stop the president's agenda. They can no longer hide. And that is that last place they want to be.

Which explains why they are doing everything to sink this bill. They know it means a huge Democratic majority for years to come, and it means they will have to be the bad guys in order to stop the kind of reforms Democrats have been promising for decades. Bad guys are the incumbents who lose elections and don't get to be Senators anymore. They want Reagan-Bush-Clinton style gridlock. It means they don't have to be responsible for fouling up the country. It means they can pad their pockets. It means they can get a great lobbying/TV/pundit gig afterwards. Bad guy senators...they don't get cool gigs. They don't make a great addition to the letterheads of lobbying firms. They get shafted.

The second part is, and let's face it, there are plenty of Senators on both sides of the aisle horrified that the Democrats may be in charge again for a long, long time. Your average Senator is in their 60's. They tend to be very conservative anyway as people. Pretending to follow the party line to get elected is not exactly something new here. Republicans just call them Mavericks and drag them out when it looks like they're not doing too well. Democrats just hide theirs until it comes time to kill anything that remotely looks liberal.

So yeah, the same old ossified Chamber of Commerce mentality naturally precludes a bill that would significantly change the long term power structure in Washington towards liberalism. So, yes, it has to die screaming like it did in 1993...and look how the next 15 years turned out after that. The Village is doing it because they like playing kingmaker. The GOP is doing it because they don't want to be running around in the wilderness until 2030. But the ConservaDems...it takes a special brand of mealy-mouthed politicially opportunistic amoeba colony to be one of them.

As I've said before, the Village, the GOP and the ConservaDems must do everything they can to kill Obamacare. It's self-preservation of the political patronage system, plain and simple.