David Frum: Republican Waterloo

[Fast Walker 52]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/the-republican-waterloo/520833/

Seven years and three days ago, the House of Representatives grumblingly voted to approve the Senate’s version of the Affordable Care Act. Democrats in the House were displeased by many of the changes introduced by Senate Democrats. But in the interval after Senate passage, the Republicans had gained a 41st seat in the Senate. Any further tinkering with the law could trigger a Republican filibuster. Rather than lose the whole thing, the House swallowed hard and accepted a bill that liberals regarded as a giveaway to insurance companies and other interest groups. The finished law proceeded to President Obama for signature on March 23, 2010.

A few minutes after the House vote, I wrote a short blog post for the website I edited in those days. The site had been founded early in 2009 to argue for a more modern and more moderate form of Republicanism. The timing could not have been worse. At precisely the moment we were urging the GOP to march in one direction, the great mass of conservatives and Republicans had turned on the double in the other, toward an ever more wild and even paranoid extremism. Those were the days of Glenn Beck’s 5 o’clock Fox News conspiracy rants, of Sarah Palin’s “death panels,” of Orly Taitz and her fellow Birthers, of Tea Party rallies at which men openly brandished assault rifles.

The conservative establishment in Washington caught the same fever that then raged among conservatives across the country. At that time, I worked at the American Enterprise Institute, the most high-toned of Washington’s conservative think tanks. In later years, AEI would provide a home for the emerging “reform conservative” tendency. Its president, Arthur Brooks, would speak eloquently of the need for conservatives to show concern for the poor and the hard-pressed working class. But all that lay ahead in 2010. The mood then was that supporters and opponents of the Obama administration were engaged in a furious battle over whether the United States would remain a capitalist economy at all.
(snip)

In that third week in March in 2010, America committed itself for the first time to the principle of universal (or near universal) health-care coverage. That principle has had seven years to work its way into American life and into the public sense of right and wrong. It’s not yet unanimously accepted. But it’s accepted by enough voters—and especially by enough Republican voters—to render impossible the seven-year Republican vision of removing that coverage from those who have gained it under the Affordable Care Act. Paul Ryan still upholds the right of Americans to “choose” to go uninsured if they cannot afford to pay the cost of their insurance on their own. His country no longer agrees.

Basically, Republicans got owned by the ACA, and Frum called it back in 2010, as the rest of the party went increasingly insane.

[Vogon_Glory]

1. Battle of Waterloo? I want the Battle of Berlin

Last edited Sat Mar 25, 2017, 02:00 PM - Edit history (1)

Good-bye and good riddance Republican Party!

(Word corrected)

Will the last GOPster out of the Feuhrer bunker please turn out the lights?

[StevieM]

3. I think you may have mis-wrote what you were trying to say.

You wrote "Republican Part" but I think you meant to say "Republican Party."

And I don't think they will be easy to get rid of. They are brilliant liars who are completely immoral. That tends to produce results, as we have seen many times.

[Fast Walker 52]

4. LOL! That may be coming... we have serious charges coming down the pike

[Alice11111]

6. It is really 2 Repub parties now, Freedom Fighters& Others

They will probably come together on tax cuts though.

Its true that we Dems were disappointed too in Obamacare. Obama wanted a public option, which would have eventually become the main option. Repubs went crazy, communist, socialized medicine, ruining the best Healthcare system in the world...such BS...unstated real point: the system that makes the most for insurance companies...the Repubs real goal.

Anyway, Obama did the best possible, under the circumstances, of fighting the Repubs, big insurance, and even some purist Dems. It is a miracle he got it done.
Thank you, Prez Obama!!

[dchill]

10. They don't know where the switches are, remember?

[saidsimplesimon]

2. Thank you Fast Walker

Myself, I'm a gazer.

[Fast Walker 52]

5. welcome!

[JHB]

7. It's been on this trajectory for your entire adult life, Dave...

Movement Conservatism has defined itself by the absolute contempt it has for its opposition: first the centrist Rockefeller Republicans, then for Democrats -- ALL Democrats. Reagan ran on themes that bigots ate up with a spoon. So did GHW Bush: from the "revolving door jail" against Dukakis to the "make them avatars of everything you hate about the 60s" tactics against Bill & Hillary Clinton.

What was the response to their loss in 1992? The prototype for what you note about 2009: "don't accept the loss, dig in and do everything --ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING -- to fight this illegitimate regime." And they did, for eight years and beyond.

You were there for it all, you turned 30 in 1990, you were a grown-up. Which side were you on? What did you do when it might have counted?

You want to talk about Burkean Conservatism? Go get a sinecure at a university, there's probably some conservative billionaire who'll fund it. But don't pretend that this is some shocking development, or that the Republicans have taken a wrong turn. They took that turn while you were still in school. How long did it take you to see it?

[Fast Walker 52]

9. yes, more reasonable conservatives are always at an awkward spot, considering how horrible the bulk

of their movement is.