Brainwaves of Sken

Reading commentary in a conservative blog about the republicans setting up their own Waterloo in their attempt to set up Obama’s:

“When Republicans stop sounding unhinged and start talking about fiscal conservatism in terms other than the looniest sort of supply side voodoo economics (a Republican originally came up with that phrase), maybe they’ll win more battles.

However, I don’t think they can at this point. Conservatives like Frum used to be comfortable in the party. Heck, he wrote speeches for a Republican President. Now? Now he’s practically in exile for holding positions which are not remotely liberal but have a fairly consistent conservative worldview behind them. I actually feel slightly sorry for him.”

I think it’s interesting, how the final plan is so close to many of the health care plans originally presented by Republicans (the Dole plan and McCain plan, for instance). From a marketing perspective, by presenting this plan as apocalyptically as they did, they left no room to even pretend to have a part in passing this plan, and no room to downplay the win here by the Democrats in office.

In other words, they can’t just say, “This health care bill doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things as far as movement away from the right goes” because they’ve presented it as if Hitler and Stalin colluded to bring it to pass, as if it contained the very heart of socialism. (Of course, it’s not what you’d call fiscally conservative, but neither is the Republican Party or its platform – Reagan brought in “borrow-and-spend” to replace “tax-and-spend”, right?)

When Obama signed the executive order that codified the idea that no federal funds would be spent on abortion – a huge, huge sacrifice to get social conservatives on board – the Republican party should have, for its own sake, seen the way the wind was blowing and jumped on board. This was as far right-leaning as a bill like this was ever going to get, and they could claim they debated in good faith.

Instead, they hung on to hope that the bill would die, and that Obama’s “hope” (and political capital) would die, too.

I agree with other commentators that when I see people talk about how they hope this plan fails, I want to vomit. In this day and age, you can’t take a picture of a public monument without being accused of terrorism, but you can fervently desire the failure of our government and country to thrive and still call yourself patriotic.

Just like reasonable Democrats had to hope they were wrong about Iraq, for the sake of our country, so too do reasonable Republicans have to hope that they’re wrong about this bill, and that we end up better off for it – because the alternative, right now, is too painful to contemplate, regardless of the way you swing.

~ by Skennedy on March 22, 2010.

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