The last year saw increasing numbers of Republicans embrace the tea party’s cause of repealing “Obamacare.”  Feelings towards the law are mixed.  However, just as many people remain woefully ignorant that Barack Obama actually cut taxes or that almost 40% of the $700 billion dollar stimulus bill was larded with useless tax cuts in a futile attempt to get Republican support, public awareness of what actually constitutes Obamacare is low.  As Ezra Klein notes, when you get to the individual components of the bill most of them enjoy broad public support.  It is a pattern similar to the cause of cutting government expenses, where the devil is in the details and deficit peacocks continue to tie themselves in knots in identifying meaningful cuts.

The most unpopular component of the bill is the individual mandate.  Interestingly enough it was the one major policy disagreement between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.  Clinton wanted one, Obama did not.  However, faced with the free rider problem he changed his mind after assuming office.  With insurance companies forbidden to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions they supported the mandate.  Keeping that restriction in place without a mandate could also lead to an explosion of health care costs.

For a total repeal of Obamacare to happen, Republicans will have to make the pre-existing coverage requirement unpopular.  Not surprisingly windbags like Rush Limbaugh have started equating the rule to welfare.  It will be interesting to see if the dittoheads follow the corpulent pied piper like lemmings to support such a cause near and dear to health insurance companies.  David Frum exiled to conservative Siberia for daring to suggest that the passage of Obamacare was a disaster for Republicans expects a lot of posturing with little action from the Republicans.  Meanwhile Richard Cohen notes that Republicans continue to further the delusion that our bloated and inefficient healthcare system is the best in the world - American exceptionalism run amuck.

Ultimately the likeliest avenue for the repeal of Obamacare will come from the conservative majority on the Supreme Court (needless to say the right wing and the Federalist Society will not treat such an action overruling Congress as “activist”) not the Republicans in Congress.

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After 60 years of trying, Health Care Reform finally passed earlier this year.  The Republicans used it to gin up support for their base.  The Democrats went silent.  This allowed Fox News and other components of the Republican media machine to rail against the law even though many of the individual components of the law are quite popular.  The advertisement below by Rick Waugh running an incredibly long shot campaign against Eric Cantor is an example of how Democrats could have thrown Republicans on the defensive:

But then if frogs had wings their butts wouldn’t be so sore.  We are after all talking about the Democrats whose spines are made of jelly.  Rather than boldly standing behind the popular portions of the law, you have people like Joe Manchin who cravenly flipped their positions for short term electoral prospects.  With Democrats unable or unwilling to tout their accomplishments during the Obama presidency, it is no wonder that the enthusiasm gap came into being.  However, undesirable the ultimate end result I will shed no tears when some of these gutless wonders (e.g. Blanche Lincoln and an assortment of Blue Dog Democrats) lose.

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Because it was passed by a Democratic president.

Ezra Klein notes the history of Republican Senators who had no problem with a health care mandate in the past and actually sponsored legislation containing one  This has been one of the tragedies of the health care debate.  Barack Obama passed a bill that Bill Clinton could have passed in 1993 with the blessings of the Republicans in Congress.  But today that is portrayed as a socialistic power grab, even though it did not contain the public option that most of the left and a majority of the country wanted.  The question now is whether the conservatives on the Roberts court will have a similar change of heart.

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A couple of articles today discuss the healthcare albatross crippling Mitt Romney’s presidential dreams (See here and here).  This blog discussed this issue months ago (See here and here).  Republicans still wax eloquently on repealing “Obamacare” and replacing it with their plan that barely expands access to health care.  They also still talk about barring insurance companies from discriminating for pre-existing conditions but do not specify how they will address the freeloader problem.  No wonder that the man from the party of no ideas who wants to be speaker admits that he has no solutions to offer.

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The passage of health care reform may have had the unintended side effect of winnowing the 2012 presidential field.  While the 2012 Republican convention is over two years away, an eternity in politics, Mitt Romney may have just seen his hopes of securing the Republican nomination go up in smoke.

Romney’s ambitions and his willingness to adapt his positions to the prevailing winds are no secret.  Even by the low standards of politicians he displayed a chameleon like ability to change his colors for the prevailing audience and the brazen chutzpah to attack people for holding positions he held a short while before.  This made him very unpopular among his fellow Republican candidates notably John McCain and Mike Huckabee who barely concealed their disdain for him.  The 2007-8 Republican presidential debates often degenerated into “whack-a-Mitt” sessions where all the candidates ganged up in the self funded Romney with cheerful glee.  See link.  His Mormon faith also acted as a handicap as the Republican evangelical base looked at him with suspicion.

When John McCain all but wrapped up the Republican nomination the ever malleable Romney promptly dropped out to stump for McCain in hopes of securing the Vice Presidential nod.  Unfortunately all that sucking up came to naught when McCain went for the wonderfully clueless Sarah Palin.

In the aftermath of the elections Romney has tried to reposition himself as the only remaining adult among the Republican candidates.  His extensive business background lends him a public perception of gravitas on economic issues.  He has stayed away from an embrace of the occasionally unhinged tea party protests.  His attempts to burnish his credentials on foreign policy were less successful since his Palinesque use of jargon and tough words largely drew snickers.  See here and  here.

But for a long time the sword of Damocles hanging over Romney was his signature accomplishment as governor of Massachusetts – health care reform.  In the Republican primaries Romney defended his plan but faced a dilemma when the contours of Obamacare started to look very similar to Romneycare.  While even the latest Wall Street Journal editorial replete with Republican talking points (some discredited) refers to the two plans as “fraternal policy twins” Romney has been busy tying himself in knots in explaining how the plans are different and whining about the alleged abuse of power by the Democrats in not deferring to a minority that lost the last two national elections.

This is a big problem for Romney.  With the Republican base whipped up into a frenzy the next nominee will have to attack Obamacare.  A federalism argument could work, but can also be countered by the fact that the balanced budget obligations on most states make it extremely impractical for any of them to pass health care reform.  In any case federalism will not explain away Romney’s willingness to sign on to government interference at the state level, something that has the base in a lather.

Even with Romney penchant  for short term memory loss on his previous policy positions, it is hard to see how Romney will be the candidate to perform that task.  Democrats will gleefully paraphrase the attack used on the last nominee from Massachusetts that Romney was “for health care before he was against it” to cement Romney’s reputation as an unprincipled flip-flopper.  A base already predisposed to distrust Romney will have a hard time trusting him as the man to take down Obamacare, which practically will be very hard to pull off in any case.

So the man who should have been the Republican nominee and had the best understanding of economic policy will enter primary season severely hobbled.  Again things can change.  A continuing bleak economic outlook could cause Republicans to hold their nose and vote for Romney, like they did for McCain in the last election cycle.   Repealing health care reform could be a fringe issue by 2012 and Romney could position himself as the man best equipped to fix it.  But at present it is hard to see Romney securing the support of a distrustful base.  IMO the man the Obama campaign should worry about comes from next door Indiana – Mitch Daniels, though a lot can change in the next two years.

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Left for dead after the upset victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, health care reform came roaring back tonight. After a week of arm twisting and persuasion, Speaker Nancy Pelosi locked up the votes to pass the original Senate bill.  The bill now goes to the President for his signature after which the fixes to the Senate Bill will go to the Senate for passage thru the reconciliation process.  See link.  In an interesting twist the Republicans no votes to the fixes in the Senate bill will essentially be yes votes towards keeping Ben Nelson’s infamous “cornhusker kickback” in place.  A competent political party would use it to highlight the Republican transformation into the Party of No, but this is the Democrats we are talking about.

One heartening thing in the last week is the emergence of the Democratic spine.  In the aftermath of the Brown victory many Democrats were ready to fold.  To me it made no sense.  The yes votes on the previous bill were already on record in the Senate and the House and the Democrats were going to get pilloried for it.  The Democrats are not likely to get as big a majority in the near future.  Failure to pass health care reform after coming so close guaranteed a dispirited base that would not turn out in November.  Now Barack Obama and the Democrats can go into the elections by pointing to the legislative accomplishment of our generation that even with its many flaws makes the United States the last industrialized country in the world to provide universal health care access.

The Republicans will run on a platform on repeal.  Don’t hold your breath on them ever actually passing a bill repealing a ban on insurance companies canceling policies for sick people,  denying health care coverage for pre-existing conditions or subsidies for the poor to obtain health insurance.  In their honester and off the record moments the Republicans will admit that as well.  As in Massachusetts this bill will grow in popularity.  Maybe if the Republicans break from their thrall of right wing talk radio they will work with the Democrats to get meaningful cost control provisions and tort reform into the bill.

The saddest part of this debate was the Republican encouragement (place of honor goes to Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann) of the heated rhetoric from the right that this bill epitomized creeping fascism.  They went all in on the policy articulated by Jim DeMint of South Carolina that stopping health care reform would break the Obama presidency.  All of this on a bill very similar to Romney care in Massachusetts and similar to the bill proposed by Bob Dole in 1994 made any compromise impossible.  There were legitimate and principled reasons to oppose the bill, but they were drowned out in the cacophony right wing talk radio and Fox News (with Republican encouragement) helped create. Read the rest of this entry »

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