The Real Deal Appeal Of Repeal

Yggy argues that the GOP running on repealing health care reform is just not going to happen:

Steve Benen had a good rundown yesterday of the pressure conservative activists are putting on politicians to say they’ll “repeal” health care reform. This strikes me as very unlikely to happen. To see why, you have to ask what “repeal” would mean. Nobody’s going to mount a challenge to an incumbent member of congress by promising to start letting insurance companies deny more claims, or charge women higher premiums. You could promise to repeal Obama’s death panels, but that would be hard to follow up on since they don’t exist. You could promise to repeal the provision forcing hospitals to be more transparent about what they charge but . . . why would you do that?

The juicy political target to hit would be the individual mandate which certainly can easily enough be made to sound like a terrible thing. And this would probably make reform unworkable if you could do it. But industry players aren’t going to want that. Nor is anyone going to want to see lower subsidies for middle class families.


What does seem realistic is that future, more conservative, congresses might do other kinds of conservative stuff that will impact health reform. Rather than repealing the specific tax provisions that finance reform, you’ll see drives to cut taxes for the rich. Rather than bringing back the good old days of rescission, you’ll at a minimum keep hearing talk about the idea of de facto gutting insurance regulation by “selling plans across state lines.” And instead of complaints about how reform is going to blow up the deficit, you’ll see a combination of tax (cut! cut! cut! especially for the rich) and spending policies that do in fact blow up the deficit. But nothing will be “repealed.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you'd better believe that the Teabaggers will try.  Yggy is wrong on this one.  They'll fail in 2010 but not because they are going to lack the attempt.  They will have no choice but to do so, or they know they will be primaried right out of existence in 2012.  Yes, they don't care if it means less subsidies for the middle class.  They will say "We can afford tax cuts if we stop the subsidies.  You want magical job creating tax cuts, right?"

Look, unless the Dems make the case that this plan is vital and will be helping Americans now, they are going to turn on it in droves and go right along with the "repeal it now" mob.  The GOP is betting they'll have enough clout in 2011 to do just that...and should they fail, well the problem is "We could have repealed it but Obama vetoed it" and we go through all this again in 2012.

When you have a logical Democratic argument on one side and Republican bullshit on the other, betting against the bullshit is a losing proposition unless it's so flagrant that the Republicans trip over themselves.

[UPDATE 12:02 PM] And of course if the economy's still in the trash can in November...and it will be, as I've been warning for a while now...yes, Americans will blame the Dems and vote against their own self-interests because the Republicans and the Village will have convinced them that the Dems have only made things worse.