While polls taken on the eve of the historic health care reform vote were inconclusive about whether a majority of Americans supported passage, they were consistent in showing that a majority either supported passage or opposed passage because the bill wasn’t liberal enough. Either way, however, while it’s true that the country is very polarized on the issue, it’s also clear that this comment is false:
Echoing many on the right, Newt Gingrich today sent an email claiming, “In every recent poll the vast majority of Americans opposed this monstrosity.”
A majority supported the bill in the Kaiser Foundation and The Economist polls.
Does this close split mean that the bill is firmly in the mainstream of political thinking on health care policy? That depends on what you mean. It will be an ongoing irony, as Brad DeLong points out, that Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney passed a version of ObamaCare in 2004 when he was the governor of Massachusetts. The outlines of ObamaCare were first proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation in the early 1990’s. The idea being that a personal mandate was a form of personal responsibility that was preferable to a nanny-state that just hands health care to you without any effort on your part. If you take the kind of “serious” people who discuss health care policy in Washington think tanks then ‘yes’ these reforms are solidly in the middle (or mainstream). But no Republicans in either house of Congress voted for them. So, is it fair to say that the reforms are mainstream but the Republican Party is way out on a limb?
I think it is fair to say that.
The Republicans didn’t have a mainstream alternative on health care because Obama proposed a plan that, aside from the public option, was indistinguishable from what their ‘wonks’ came up with the last time Washington tried to reform our health system. Even when Obama agreed to drop the public option, no Republicans could be persuaded to vote for his bill. So, their opposition was purely political in nature, and grounded in their belief that granting subsidies to people to buy health care and expanding Medicaid will make the Democrats more popular and expand their permanent base.
Calling your own analysts’ plans ‘socialist’ and a ‘monstrosity’ is dishonest. And it strikes me as a real problem that the Republicans have poisoned their own base’s minds about the nature of the health care reforms. They can’t walk this back now and govern responsibly without being seen as sell-outs and commie-appeasers.
I don’t know what mainstream is. Is it the meeting point between right and left wonks? Is it the point where a small group from the minority is willing to cross the aisle? A large group? Or, is it when the polls show the country almost perfectly polarized on an issue? Is that the sweet spot in the middle we should all be shooting for? Broder? Anyone?
This scares the shit out of me.
It would scare the shit out of me too, if they were actually popular. But fortunately, it also scares the shit out of most Americans. The GOP thinks that by getting disproportionate media exposure, and by skewing the narrative to make the Dems look like the minority, they will become more popular. But this is simply too far from reality. It used to work, but they passed the point of no return a while ago. That trick works with about 25-30% of the population tops, in some localities more, in most, less.
The Dems can control the narrative by controlling actual events. These cannot be fake events, GOP style, but real accomplishments.
Those on the left, by giving “disproportionate coverage” in their own minds to the wingnuts, are in their own way succumbing to the hypnosis of far-right spin, no less than the Tea Partiers. It’s just that their reaction is different. I admit the far right is scary, but it’s always been scary. Let’s stop this BS narrative. We really do hold the center. That doesn’t mean all left issues are now in the center, fr from it. It means that, given the present circumstances, the GOP has left the center and whether the Teabaggers or the Firebaggers like it or not, leaders like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi know where that center is.
I don’t believe the far right is now any bigger or more popular, or really any different, than it’s ever been. Maybe a lot of people on the left have been unaware of its existence. It’s much more visible. In a way that’s good. It’s like picking up something that’s been lying on the floor for years and discovering that there is a nest of cockroaches under it. But they were there all along.
But what does it mean that the GOP is now controlled by these freaks? Does it mean that they have risen to mainstream status? Or does it mean that the GOP has become a fringe group without anything real to offer the nation? The GOP acts like, and wants you to believe, the former. But most people, when they see this stuff, perceive it as fringe. The Overton Window is a concept — pushing it doesn’t necessarily work, neither for the left nor for the right. And the more people see of them, with all their media exposure, the LESS they like them.
I also believe the Dems, the leadership anyway, are fully aware that they have got to deliver. I think they are getting their act together. They just made the GOP look like the clowns they are. This will continue. Fuck the MSM.
It should. As I have been saying, the biggest threat facing our country is the Palinization of the Republican Party.
It’s the same threat since 1994. The Gingrichization of the Republican Party. There is just a mad scramble to make the financial hay that Gingrich has made. Bachmann, Foxx, Palin, Goehmert, …., they are all Gingrich wannabes. The rhetoric escalates because they are trying to outdo each other.
When they are left with the crazies, the number of “Republicans” will be maybe 200,000. And corporations will have created a new brand.
True, and they (the right wing) are likely to get worse before they get better. It will take a sustained series of defeats before it’s finally in their self-interest to change their tactics and policies.
Fortunately for us (and the country), Obama seems like the kind of politician who can deal effectively with the Palin/Gingrich wing of the Republican party. He’s clear about his own values, a good listener, willing to compromise and adopt good ideas from his opponents—in other words, exactly the kind of politician most likely to expose the craziness of the far right.
Bill Clinton was that kind of politician, too. It’s a big part of the reason he was able to have a relatively effective presidency, despite Republican control of the House for six of his eight years.
Obama, as David Frum pointed out the other day, has the advantage of a larger, more powerful political base than Clinton. He also has 4 million teenagers turning 18 every year for the next several years—and those young voters are overwhelmingly inclined to vote for Democrats, especially if Democrats keep fighting for things like health care, student loans, gay rights, immigration reform, etc.
well, they ARE sellouts, and they should be seen as such.
The last time the GOP made an honest argument was 1964, and we saw how well that worked out for them…
Correction:
The last time the modern conservative movement in the Republican Party made an honest argument was in 1964…
Which is why they have had to lie cheat, steal, burrow, and intimidate their way into power. When presented with their agenda straight up, the American people reject it.
Overwhelmingly…
aside from anything else?
When I claimed last week that the calculator provided by the Kaiser family Foundation showed I’d pay a lot more for insurance under the bill passed, you explicitly critized kaiser family foundation, saying:
but when the results from “that source” coincide with what you support, you’re happy to cite them. either you think they’re untrustworthy or you don’t: which is it?
look at the reason I cited it? To refute the literal truth of Gingrich’s argument. I don’t trust their poll, but it doesn’t show a vast majority of the country opposing these reforms, does it?
oh, i totally understand. believe me.
Interesting to note that Kucinnich voted for it.
Unfortunately, what’s mainstream is what know-littles of the CNN/ABC/CBS/Fox/NBC kind say it is. This is a huge and lasting wound in our body politic.