WATERLOO SUNSET? (AND THE REAL MISSION ACCOMPLISHED)

Waterloo Sunset.



DAVID FRUM - WATERLOO


David Frum, Uber-Bushie propagandist and the man who coined the term ‘Axis of Evil,’ (although he has since tried to distance himself from it by claiming that coming up with a 3 word term was a ‘team effort’ – the same team that brought us ‘Mission Accomplished’) penned a rather scathing judgment of the GOP’s bungled anti-health care reform jihad.


Now, I know anything that comes out his mouth should be taken with a (huge) grain of salt as we’re talking about a man who championed Rudy Giulliani’s impeccable conservative credentials as an advisor for America’s Mayor’s tragic failure of a Presidential bid, but he does make some serious points that conservatives would be well advised to take heed of.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Frum is one of the few Neo-cons with the fortitude to publically admit that the entire strategy for the GOP was ‘No deal…No negotiations, no compromise, nothing.’ Despite the hollow talking points that the Democrats were shutting the Republicans out of the debate, ignoring Republican ideas, the TRUTH is that the GOP had ZERO intention of participating in the process. Obstruction and delay were the tactics used to bog the President down in a too-costly war. A war that they thought they could ultimately win.


Their disingenuous calls for the President to negotiate with the Republican leadership were laughable, especially when everyone but Charlie Brown knew that Lucy was going to pull the football away before he got a chance to put it through the uprights. The joke was on the President as he kept pivoting to try to appease them with the hopes of gaining just one Republican vote so that he could claim bipartisan support. Ultimately, the result was a version of the bill none of them would ever vote for anyway, even though it reflected many of the specific concessions that many of them actually seemed to want. Indeed, they had succeeded in co-opting the President’s self proclaimed signature initiative, infuriating progressives and firing up their base, yet as Frum notes, it wasn’t enough. They wanted ‘all the marbles.’ They could have claimed victory at that moment, but they didn’t. Frum accurately summed it up thusly;

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clinton-care in 1993-1994.

In the opening days of the health care battle. The mantra was that Romney-care was a far more palatable concept than the ideas presented by the liberals. Why, then didn’t they quit while they were ahead? Even Big Love Romney got into the act, trashing elements of the bill that might have well have had ‘Mitt was here’ on them. What the heck was he thinking?


I’ll tell you. Mitt was doing the McCain pivot – disowning pieces of legislation that had his indelible mark on them to pander to the furious few of the fanatical fringes.

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.


There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible…Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead.

McCain was crucified by the Flying Monkeys in 2008 (remember how McCain wasn’t ‘pure’ enough for them?) and never recovered. Today he faces a primary challenge from a hate radio celebrity.


McCain was for Cap ‘n Trade before he was against it, was for Climate legislation before he was against it, and hysterically, was for McCain/Feingold before he was against it. That’s like Ronald McDonald disavowing the Big Mac and endorsing the Whopper.


Romney even released a statement today attacking the health care bill, saying in part;

His health-care bill is unhealthy for America. It raises taxes, slashes the more private side of Medicare, installs price controls….It will create a new entitlement even as the ones we already have are bankrupt. For these reasons and more, the act should be repealed. That campaign begins today.

Um, sounds a lot like Romney-care to me. This tactic didn’t work for McCain and my guess is that it won’t for Romney either. The DNC released a very quick rebuttal for Mitt;

"We're sure that it must be difficult to endure all the comparisons of the similarities between your signature health care plan and the bill passed last night when you are trying to appear to be the angriest of the angry far right wing in the Republican Party, but it doesn't cover up the blatant hypocrisy of lashing out against policy that you thought well enough of to campaign for and sign into law,"

Ouch!


As much as progressives lament the defeat of liberal ideals in favor of more pragmatic (read; conservative) compromises, this vote represented the burial of the moderate Republican. Once there was time when the moderates of the right had voices within their party, today they’re RINOs who need to be purged.


And most conservative analysts understand well that the goose-chase of ‘repeal the bill’ is a waste of time. Even the Chamber of Commerce is distancing themselves from this non-starter. Does anyone rationally think that the GOP can succeed in convincing a crucial demographic – senior citizens – that perscrition drug prices should really be allowed to continue to increase?


Frum continues;

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

Mitt better watch what he hitches his wagon to, or he’ll be pulled off of the road. Unless his true goal is to land a plum FoxNews job or a lucrative reality show contract, he’d better think again about his next moves.


Anyway, David Frum’s assessment concludes by dispelling the myth that the Flying Monkeys represent anything more than their own self interests, something that most rational thinkers have known for quite sometime. Unfortunately, the poor tea-bagged patriots don’t seem to understand the reality that they’re being tea-bagged by Beck and his pill-popping papa.

The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.


So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

The behavior of the unhinged tea-baggers did no service to the cause. Many (of the remaining) moderates left in the ‘big tent’ were shocked and appalled by the racism bigotry, and histrionics of politicians who behaved more like petulant children instead of ‘esteemed’ members of Congress.


Alas, the democrats have shown a remarkable ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, so I think Waterloo is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. In the meantime, the democrats seemed to have – at least temporarily –given the President a little breathing room and allowed themselves an opportunity to live to fight another day.


If the Republican’s basic goal at the beginning of this debate was to neuter the President, they’ve failed, no matter how hard they try to rationalize or spin. November just got a little bit brighter for the Democrats.


MS 03.22.10