(Guest post by Greg Forster)
President Obama says health care socialization has “run into a bit of a buzz saw.”
Jim Geraghty asks: What’s the survival rate for people who run into buzz saws?
Jay P. Greene's Blog
With Help From Some Friends
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
President Obama says health care socialization has “run into a bit of a buzz saw.”
Jim Geraghty asks: What’s the survival rate for people who run into buzz saws?
This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 4:54 pm and is filed under economics, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Jay P. Greene's Blog
I wouldn’t send out the funeral announcements just yet.
Obama’s got three years in which to recover and the Republicans are still more interested in trying to use the grassroots conservative movement then in listening to it. Three years is plenty of time for the Repubs to disappoint and anger the unaffiliated conservatives represented by the Tea Bag movement.
I really hate the homoerotic, if not homophobic, “tea bagger” references. I wonder if the left-wing feels hypocritical, or at least a bit like a bigot, each time they say that phrase.
I must say, I expected the Dems to get their act together enough to pass a moderately centrist (i.e. only minimally statist) version of health care reform before political reality broke up their fun. But they dallied. Now they only have two options:
1. Blow it up and blame the Republicans;
2. Make it conservative by adding inter-state competition and tort reform, pass it, and call it their victory.
Either approach would be good for the country, since blaming the Republicans won’t accomplish much.
1) You mean the Republicans who have a majority in neither the House or the Senate? That courts the problem of exacerbating the loss credibility that resulted from the collapse of ObamaCare.
2) Reign in the tort bar and embrace competition? I’d rather give odds on the lion lying down with the lamb.
The second collapse of an attempt to fully and explicitly socialize the medical care system in the U.S. has hurt the lefties who largely run the Democratic party but I don’t believe to the extent that they couldn’t prevent the Democratic party from supporting market-based reforms.
There’s a third option and that’s to determinedly and forcefully turn their back on the issue. That’s the course that’s looking as if it’s been chosen by the Democrats and for the nation that’s the worst course the Democrats could choose.
I anticipate option 3: pass a few pieces of it and claim victory. The pieces will be bad enough but not nearly as bad as the whole.
Allen’s right that no political cause is ever permanently won or lost. But specific bills can be beaten, and this one has been.