Eric Cantor now outside GOP mainstream

By Frank Moraes 

It is a funny old world. It seems upside down. It is as if the drunk dozing in an alley has more wisdom to offer that the local pastor. (Which may be true!) And that is the sense that I have today, at least in politics. When Eric Cantor starts sounding reasonable, anything seems possible. But it isn't really that the world is out of balance. Nor is it the case that Cantor is actually being reasonable. As I wrote just a few days ago, the Republican Party has gotten more and more nihilistic ever since Reagan. The critical phrase here is "more and more," because it is indeed getting worse.

Eric Cantor has long been one of the great examples of Republican nihilism. But the Republican Party seems now to have passed him by. Back in April, he put forward a bill to extend health insurance coverage to people with preexisting conditions. The idea was to make the Republicans look good while harming the overall framework of Obamacare. It would at least have put Democrats in a awkward position. It was a great example of old-fashioned political strategy. As much as I may disagree with what he wanted to accomplish, at least he was doing something that might work. The House Republicans would have none of it, however, and the bill was pulled without a vote. Since then, I think they've voted for a full repeal of Obamacare another three times or something.

Yesterday, I learned thanks to Steve Benen that Cantor thinks that a shutdown of the government is a bad thing. Can you imagine?! According to National Review, he said:

To get 60 votes in the Senate, you need at least 14 Democrats to join Republicans and pass a CR [continuing resolution] that defunds Obamacare. Right now, I am not aware of a single Democrat in the Senate who would join us. If and when defunding has 60 votes in the Senate, we will absolutely deliver more than 218 votes in the House.

If it weren't for the arm rests, I would have fallen out of my chair. Is he actually suggesting that shutting down the government for the purpose of "sending a message" is a bad idea?! The next thing you know, Cantor will switch parties. I mean, this short, two data point trend of Cantor's seems to indicate that he has some interest in doing something, and that puts him well outside the mainstream of his current party.

Of course, just look at how far expectations have fallen. All Cantor is doing is making political calculations. But that is a big deal. For a lot of the House Republican caucus, doing nothing -- with the inevitable result that it will destroy the whole system -- is the point of going to Washington! That and stopping abortion and lowering the corporate tax rate. (You know what they say: "To God, every corporate dollar is sacred.") In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king! Eric Cantor is that one-eyed man.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find a drunk to discuss some problems in my life.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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Harry Reid predicts U.S. will eventually have single-payer health-care system

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And I hope he's right:

In just about seven weeks, people will be able to start buying Obamacare-approved insurance plans through the new health care exchanges.

But already, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is predicting those plans, and the whole system of distributing them, will eventually be moot.

Reid said he thinks the country has to "work our way past" insurance-based health care during a Friday night appearance on Vegas PBS' program "Nevada Week in Review."

"What we've done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we're far from having something that's going to work forever," Reid said.

When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: "Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes."

The idea of introducing a single-payer national health care system to the United States, or even just a public option, sent lawmakers into a tizzy back in 2009, when Reid was negotiating the health care bill.

"We had a real good run at the public option... don't think we didn't have a tremendous number of people who wanted a single-payer system," Reid said on the PBS program, recalling how then-Sen. Joe Lieberman's opposition to the idea of a public option made them abandon the notion and start from scratch.

Eventually, Reid decided the public option was unworkable.

"We had to get a majority of votes," Reid said. "In fact, we had to get a little extra in the Senate, we have to get 60."

On that, he is right. Single-payer, or at least a public option, would have been immensely better than the Republican-style system of "Obamacare," but it just wasn't going to happen. (Damn Lieberman, though he wasn't the only obstacle.) It's amazing how many on the left still don't understand this. I do think Obama could have done more to push for more progressive reform (assuming he actually wants a more progressive system), but the realities of the legislative branch are what they are, and it's quite amazing as it is that Reid et al. were able to get anything of substance passed at all given Republican opposition and obstructionism, conservative lies, and the concerns and objections of Democrats like Lieberman.

I wanted much more but ended up supporting Obamacare as probably the best that could have been achieved at the time -- and, yes, as the necessary thin end of the wedge that might just lead to more progressive reform down the road. And while a single-payer system isn't coming anytime soon, it's out there as the next step, or the one after that, and it may well be that the (highly likely) success of Obamacare, contra Republican fearmongering, is what eventually opens the door to it.

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Five reasons GOP government shutdown is suicide

By Frank Moraes 

Whenever I read Ramesh Ponnuru, I wonder why it is the conservative movement can't be more like him. After all, it isn't like he is exactly reasonable. I can't usually read more than two paragraphs without being forced to sit through silly Republican talking points. For example, he never misses an opportunity to slam Obamacare as though he wouldn't be firmly on board with the program if it had been enacted by President McCain.

And last Friday, he argued that one of the reasons the recent Republican efforts (to defund Obamacare via government shutdown) will look bad is because the Republicans don't have an alternative for healthcare reform. This is just silly. As I've argued before, Obamacare was the conservative alternative to health-care reform. When they decided that it was a communist conspiracy, they left themselves with nothing. Ponnuru must know that the there is no alternative to Obamacare and thus his suggestion that the Republicans need to have one is just pure conservative propaganda.

But most of the article -- "Drop the Disastrous Plan to Defund Obamacare" -- is quite good. In it, he provided five reasons why the Republican plan to shut down the government or even default on our debt is a bad idea for the Republicans themselves:

1. Republicans are less popular than the Democrats and thus all else equal will lose partisan finger-pointing contests.
2. The executive has natural advantages over a group of legislators in a crisis atmosphere.
3. People will be naturally inclined to assume that the more anti-government party must be responsible.
4. Some Republicans will say that government shutdowns or defaults are just what the country needs, and those quotes will affect the image of all Republicans.
5. The news media will surely side with the Democrats.

I think this can all be boiled down into what I have come to think of as Biden's Law. You may remember in the vice-presidential debate that Paul Ryan was talking about the almost $600 billion taken out of Medicare. He was arguing that the Republicans were the true defenders of Medicare. Joe Biden didn't even counter the specifics; he just said, "Look, folks, use your common sense. Who do you trust on this?"


And that is why the Republicans will hurt themselves if they shut down the government. People may not be too thrilled with Obamacare, but they don't think it is so bad that the government should be shut down over it. What's more, everyone knows that the Republicans are itching to shut the government down. Only the true believers will applaud this move. In the end, people will use their common sense and decide that this is not about Obamacare at all -- it's just about the fact that the Republicans hate the government.

None of this means that the Republicans won't shut down the government and default on the debt. I think I know why conservatives are so keen on doing this -- or at least threatening to do it. In the conservative world, politics is simple. If only we sent strong willed people to Washington, all problems would be solved. (Interestingly, this is part of the authoritarian mindset.)

But that isn't the way things work when you aren't in control of the White House and Congress. So they try through force of will to get what they want. That's why the House has voted 37 times to repeal Obamacare. I heard one Republican claim that they were going to continue to vote for repeal until it happened -- as though the 37 votes would have any effect on the one vote they would take after they do have control of Washington.

The move to threaten all of government is just the next logical step for the Republicans. And it does have the advantage of being an actual strategy. It isn't just a hope and a prayer -- there is an actual mechanism by which they might win. The problem is that the very small chance they have of winning is not worth all the damage they will do to their party if they lose. As I wrote in "The Next Three Election Cycles," if the Republicans manage to destroy the world economy, they will bring on their reckoning in 2014 rather than 2018.

Ponnuru isn't the only one trying to save the Republican Party from itself. I'm just not sure what he's saying will be enough. The only argument that might stop the most radical elements of the party is to say that Obamacare will be so terrible that the people will demand its repeal once it is in effect.

The problem is that no one ever believed that argument. Republicans are saying we should repeal Obamacare right now because they know that once it is in effect people will like it. Both the extremists and the more practical members of the caucus understand that this is their last chance. The only difference between these two groups is that the practical members don't want to destroy the party for this cause. The extremists don't care; they were sent to Washington to destroy it; if it is a suicide mission, so be it. (Interestingly, destruction is also a part of the authoritarian mindset.)

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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Sabotaging Obamacare: The reductio ad absurdum of Republican extremism and obstructionism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As long-time Congress-watcher Norm Ornstein (a self-defined centrist who actually works at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute) writes:

When a law is enacted, representatives who opposed it have some choices (which are not mutually exclusive). They can try to repeal it, which is perfectly acceptable -- unless it becomes an effort at grandstanding so overdone that it detracts from other basic responsibilities of governing. They can try to amend it to make it work better -- not just perfectly acceptable but desirable, if the goal is to improve a cumbersome law to work better for the betterment of the society and its people. They can strive to make sure that the law does the most for Americans it is intended to serve, including their own constituents, while doing the least damage to the society and the economy. Or they can step aside and leave the burden of implementation to those who supported the law and got it enacted in the first place.

But to do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation -- which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil -- is simply unacceptable, even contemptible. One might expect this kind of behavior from a few grenade-throwing firebrands. That the effort is spearheaded by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate -- even if Speaker John Boehner is motivated by fear of his caucus, and McConnell and Cornyn by fear of Kentucky and Texas Republican activists -- takes one's breath away.

It does, and it may be unprecedented, but it's now par for the course for Republicans, the disloyal opposition.

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Obamacare polls a little positive

By Frank Moraes 

Jonathan Bernstein has words of wisdom for us: Ignore Those Polls! Those being the recent CNN poll that show that over half of the people don't like Obamacare: 43-54. Apparently, Republicans are claiming that the poll proves them right: the people hate Obamacare! But then liberals have pushed back. Of the 54% who don't like Obamacare, 16 percentage points of them don't like it because it is not liberal enough. These are people like me who still want Medicare for all but who will take Obamacare over the Republican alternative, which is nothing at all. That means the numbers look more like this: 59-38. Liberals win, hooray!

But Bernstein points out that most people don't really know what they're talking about. It isn't until next year that Obamacare even begins its full implementation. So asking people about Obamacare now probably shows about as much as asking people who they will vote for in 2016. And he's right. The truth of the matter is after Obamacare is fully implemented, people will start to have real opinions on it -- opinions that are based upon their experiences and not the latest talking points they heard on the TV machine.

Still, I think Bernstein is wrong to pooh-pooh the poll all together. After all, a couple of years ago, Obamacare polled far worse. Two years ago, the numbers were 43-48. My guess is that the change is liberals moving from being against Obamacare to being for it. In the end, that 38% is just the Republican base. And they will be against it until they forget it was a Democratic program. We can look forward twenty years from now when Republicans carry signs that say, "Government Hands Off My Obamacare!"

So I wouldn't go as far as Jonathan Bernstein. The Republicans are kidding themselves if they think that this poll is good news for them. One thing about us liberals: we're so used to getting nothing that when we get a minor victory like Obamacare, we take it -- even if we grumble about it. Democrats do have a reason to be encouraged by this poll. However, Bernstein is right: in the final analysis, it doesn't matter. Obamacare will prove itself or it will not. But given it only has to complete with the Republican offer of nothing (not even the fee for the gaming license), it looks hopeful.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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