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TygrBright

(20,733 posts)
Mon Jul 24, 2017, 06:40 PM Jul 2017

Dear GOP Senator: Do the Political Math

Dear GOP Senators,

Tomorrow, your leadership promises, you will once again have to go on record making a helluva tough choice. Do you:

a) Vote for the latest version of Not Obamacare; or

b) Vote against it (or abstain, which would be the same thing, effectively)?

Let's set aside the policy details and fiscal numbers, for a moment. Whether you believe the CBO analyses or not, whether you're looking at the big ideological picture or not, when you go home tomorrow night, the thing that's going to haunt your last moments of wakefulness and possibly give you nightmares will really be "what is this going to do to me politically?"

In the short term, the arguments on the side of "voting for it" look pretty compelling. After all, you wouldn't have run as a Republican if that didn't imply a certain commitment to working with your Party's legislative leaders on the Party's agenda. You may be willing to assert some independence on occasion, when the stakes aren't quite so intense and public, but Party leadership has made it abundantly clear that this is NOT that time. The free passes have already been handed out. The ghost of Saint Ronnie expects everyone with an "R" after their name to do his duty.

And consider the loose cannon at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, who's well-known for holding grudges and unleashing hordes of flying monkeys on Social Media against those who offend him. Not to mention the hardline superPACs funded by his supporters and others who've espoused a Sacred Mission to mix it up against opponents of Not Obamacare in the next election cycle.

There's also the little matter of your own public promise, implicit or explicit, to lift the heavy yoke of an imperfect and costly system from the shoulders of those burdened by mandates and premium increases and less-than-optimum options. Who wants to make a public liar out of themselves in this fraught political environment?

I'm getting depressed just reading these powerful arguments, because frankly (well, on a site called "Democratic Underground" it's hardly a stretch to intuit, right?) I'd prefer you looked at the other side of the equation for a minute.

So, first- I've lost track, on the game program, but this is either the third or the fourth go-round for y'all with respect to some version of Not Obamacare, in a period of weeks. After seven years of swearing to drive a stake through the loathly creature's shrivelled and ashy heart, and replace it with something that will be a genuine improvement, those optics don't impress. Everyone- including your own constituents, and plenty of Not Obamacare supporters- knows this is a hot mess of a bill, being jammed through just because Reasons, and not very good Reasons. So... irresponsible, at best.

Second... the PROCESS. OMG, could y'all have gone about it in a more obviously sleazy, underhanded, opaque, slip-one-over-on-the-rubes fashion? Apparently all of these fragrant offerings have been cobbled together in back rooms by a small number of Senators and staff, each with a particular part of Not Obamacare they want to consign to oblivion forever, but without a whole lot of reality-based experience in health care policy and economics, and What Happens When Lots of People Need Health Care but Have No Money. And then having put in all their favorite bits, and added a few clauses that essentially say "and everything else that has anything to do with Obamacare is hereby consigned to outer darkness", they called it "a bill."

And now they want you to vote on it. Without discussion. Without hearings. Without a chance to even make it look as though you're acting with mature and responsible deliberation on behalf of the people of your great state. Get on the bus, wherever it's going, you're all going there together.

And that brings me to the final bit of political math: Where it's going.

Here's where you need to pay attention, Senator. Because while you may be invited to Yet Another Rose Garden Victory Lap, those photo ops are soon over, and those "triumphs" of Legislative Will can go sour awfully fast. Suppose you "win" this one? You and the whole GOP? What does that get you?

It should be fairly clear by this time that one thing it will get you is a turn in the barrel, holding a sackful of turds, as the many people in your great state who lose their insurance coverage or see deductibles and/or premiums take off like a rocket, or see their insurance plans exclude coverage for anything that can be labelled a pre-existing condition, get REALLY PISSED OFF.

AT YOU.

It will get you more than a little blowback, since you own the papers on this stumbling nag that brings down the whole field, when your great state's governor has to try and cope with the opioid epidemic, lost Medicaid funds, rural hospitals closing, and a whole nightmare of other consequences.

The GOP will own the results of tomorrow's vote. They (and you) can own a short period of embarassment as y'all admit you maybe jumped the gun on trying to keep a promise, and now going forward you'll have to take the time and deal with the sausage machine to try to do it correctly.

Or they (and you) can own a long, long period of being The Party That Screwed People Out of Their Health Care because they wanted to have a Rose Garden Victory Party with an increasingly unpopular administration.

There it is, Senator.

Your choice.

Choose wisely, and may God help us all.

pessimistically,
Bright

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Dear GOP Senator: Do the Political Math (Original Post) TygrBright Jul 2017 OP
K&R defacto7 Jul 2017 #1
Thank you. n/t TygrBright Jul 2017 #2
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