That GOP Plan Again

Remember, the GOP Plan is that Obamacare must die or the GOP is doomed for a generation, period. They're twice as anxious to kill it because of the Teabagger future of the party, where the rich country club Republicans get excised from the party and have no choice but to join the Dirty F'ckin Hippies, and there's only room for so many corporate lickspittles in any given party. The Dems are full up on those.

So yes. It must die, like the last season of Moonlighting had to die. Tim at Balloon Juice? He gets it.

Bill Kristol had it right in 1994. If Democrats effectively fix health care then Republicans are screwed. Any health care reform that does not suck even worse would effectively be written in stone as soon as it passed. Realigning their issue set to stay relevant could be quite awkward since Democrats already claimed most of the issues that Americans don’t hate. To stay alive Republicans would need to tack somewhere less crazy, but that would motivate Michelle Bachmann’s twenty-some percent of crazy people to go third party. Those two factors would effectively doom Republicans to share a shrinking back bench with the conservative fruitcake party and their pet schmuck Joe Lieberman.

So yeah, Republicans pulled out all the stops on this one. If they can find another stop before the Senate vote they’ll pull that one too. Pretty much the only institutional incentive not pushing them towards brinksmanship at this point is that desiccated raisin occupying space where most people would have a conscience.

If Obamacare passes, they are done. They know this. They have removed all limiters from the system. That's why they are screaming that the House bill is the Worst Piece Of Legislation Mankind Has Ever Seen, Including Anything Hitler, Doctor Doom, Lex Luthor And The Cylons Ever Could Have Combined To Create.

All stops are out. All bets are off. We're now in uncharted territory where the House has passed a health care reform bill. The GOP is existentially frightened to the core here. It's this bill, or their party. It really is that simple. It has to die, or the GOP dies and is eaten by the Teabaggers. The Sensible Centrist types aren't going to stand for it.

Josh Marshall gets it too...

As Bill Kristol noted in his famous 1993 GOP strategy memo on the Clinton health care reform initiative, the key danger Republicans face from health care reform is precisely that the public will like it. And I suspect that the more forward thinking and perspicacious of his partisan colleagues today see it the same way.

If a health care reform bill passes, it's greatest point of vulnerability will be in the 2010 election. That's not only because of the on-going fall-out of the 2008 financial crisis, which sets the Democrats up for a tough midterm election. It's also because a lot of the key reforms in the legislation don't kick in for a few years. But even if you assume the worst possible outcome for the Democrats in 2010, loss of both houses of Congress, Republican majorities still wouldn't be able to overturn the law because President Obama would veto their repeal.

Greg Sargent gets it as well.

The vote puts Dems within striking distance of an achievement that could rewrite the relationship Americans have with government and deal a serious blow to the anti-government ideology that has done so much to define our politics for at least a generation.

There’s unquestionably a long way to go. And it’s still anything but assured that the bill will become law, and if so, whether the public will judge it a success in the long run. Either short or long-term failure could spark a severe political backlash. Those are the stakes.

In other words, this is the true end of Reaganism, and Reaganism has defined the GOP and this country for 30 years: "Government is not the solution, it is the problem." This bill reverses that, and would enshrine into law that the private sector has failed 99.99% of Americans in this country at the expense of that .01%. The problem is that the Senate all pretty much belongs to that .01% too.

So it comes down to this: the Dems may actually pull this off still. It's gotten further than it ever has. And the Republicans are flat-out terrified.

Everything up until now was just the prelude to the real battle.