Go ahead, make our decade

posted at 5:59 pm on December 16, 2009 by CK MacLeod
[ Healthcare ]   

In the Annals of Always Doing the Right Thing, I examined the possibility that a collapse of Obamacare prior to Senate passage, and the substitution of “incremental, bipartisan reforms” would represent a typically American step on the way to exhausting all other possibilities before finally getting around to something sensible and necessary.

Now that the public option and Medicare buy-in provisions seem to have been permanently struck from the Senate health bill, the final obstacles to passage of something-anything have been reduced – though not eliminated, whatever the latest handicapping via the Fox News All-Stars. With no Gang of N senators having appeared demanding a different something-anything, just somewhat slightly sane, with the Republicans finally resorting to delay and obstruction tactics of the sort they had previously been holding in reserve, it will be tempting to give in to despair.

Wrong – the hard thing for a conservative should be maintaining appropriate levels of outrage while restraining the urge to laugh one’s conservative head off.

Purely from a political standpoint, this should be a time for celebration – watching the worst political leadership combine in modern, perhaps in all American history joining hands and leaping off the President’s “precipice.” If ever there was a time for “the worse, the better” rightwing Leninism, this may be it. Or, for those who prefer their references more pop culture-y, there’s always Dirty Harry (if it was good enough for Ronald Reagan, it’s good enough for me):

Allahpundit ties together several strands, then sums things up succinctly in a message to the Dems (if not quite as succinctly as Massachusetts Dem Michael Capuano): “Good luck in those midterms, champ.” William Kristol, whose idea inspired the earlier post on politically sane alternatives, provides a political play call – noting that Obamacare’s three main beneficiaries are Big Pharma, Big Government, and Big Insurance, while urging the Republicans to argue “1,000 times no”:

…if the legislation passes, the GOP should immediately begin trying to repeal key parts of it. The moment it passes, Mitch McConnell might introduce free-standing legislation repealing the Medicare cuts. Republicans could highlight their opposition to Big Pharma and Big Insurance by trying to force votes–in 2010–on drug re-importation and more insurance competition, measures that could go into effect right away so as to be of immediate benefit to the American people. And of course they should promise to relieve the American people of the prospect of living under the Democrats’ health bureaucracy regime by promising repeal of the whole thing in 2011.

Jay Cost, an observer not usually given to any form of melodrama, puts things more emotively:

When the people catch wind of the full scope of this bill, and they will, there will be hell to pay. The public has been known to vote against big business and big government. Somehow, this compromised bill manages to deliver both – big government and big business, joined together, with the little guy forced to participate.

If the Democrats pass this bill, the Republicans will pound them relentlessly and mercilessly in next year’s midterm campaign. All across the country right now, would-be Republican candidates can sense that this is their chance finally to get into Congress. They’re already starting to toss their hats into the ring. Many more will follow because they know what the public thinks of this. They know that they’ll find plenty of donors to bankroll those ads talking about the individual mandate, the insurance company giveaways funded by Medicare cuts, the victory for special interests, and how it all happened behind closed doors. And they know what kind of effect these ads are going to have.

Democrats were bound to lose seats next year because it is a midterm and they’re in charge. They were bound to lose extra seats because it’s a recession. But if they pass this bill, God help them. The people sure as hell won’t.

Peter Wehner thinks it will stick:

[T]his process has been so bad, the products it has produced so defective, and the potential ramifications so destructive that, if the president signs health-care legislation into law, he will — with the stroke of his pen — provide Republicans with a golden opportunity to return to power. He is, in fact, in the process of setting the stage for a realignment of some significance. Repealing and replacing the monstrosity that Democrats call health-care reform will, absent some totally unforeseen events, become the dominant issue for the 2010 elections. And Democrats will, I think, pay a huge political price for what they are championing.

Barack Obama is turning out to be a very significant political figure, but not quite in the way he imagined. Ronald Reagan gave rise to a rebirth of conservatism and the GOP. So might Barack Obama.

If these gentlemen are right, we can stop calling it Obamacare, Pelosicare, Reidcare, Idon’tcare, Whatevercare:  The day it passes it will be Zombiecare.

The fiscal and perhaps other reckonings to come will likely require much more from us and our political system than merely avoiding the Obamacrats’ mistakes, but they have provided the negative blueprint for how to proceed to that hard business, and much of the material for construction – even if the Dems do themselves a favor and scrap this bill at the 11th hour. Do the systematic opposite of what they’ve been doing. That template may serve conservatives for a generation.

Okay – now feel free to go back to your wailing and gnashing – and try not to let anyone catch you winking at your friends.

cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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