Stopped Clock Is Right Alert

Amazingly enough, Ross Douthat manages to say something that I don't immediately follow with the phrase "Honestly?"

In the end, when the history of the health care debate is written, I don’t think any of the choices that G.O.P. lawmakers made this year will loom particularly large. The choices that they made, or didn’t make, across the last fifteen years are what made all the difference. Between the defeat of Clintoncare and the election of Barack Obama, the Republicans had plenty of chances to take ownership of the health care issue and pass a significant reform along more free-market, cost-effective lines. They didn’t. The system deteriorated on their watch instead. And now they’re suffering the consequences.

He's right about that.  The GOP proceeded to wreck FDA and CDC funding yelling "wasteful pork!", putting Americans at risk in food and drug safety and epidemic responses just so drugmakers could save money on testing and get unsafe drugs to the market faster, and then proceeded to hand out $1.2 trillion to Big Pharma in the Medicare drug benefit bill Bush passed.  That was the GOP idea of "health care reform."  That's why nobody trusts them on the issue now.

He's wrong on the first part, however.  The choice of NO NO NO A THOUSAND TIMES NO WE WILL FILIBUSTER ALL LEGISLATION HA HA HA HA! will affect the GOP for a long, long time to come.