During his campaign for the presidency, the signature of Barack Obama’s rallies was the “Yes, We Can!” chant from his supporters. “Yes, we can responsibly end the war in Iraq.” “Yes, we can repair our reputation in the world.” “Yes, we can provide access to health care to all Americans.” And so on. I don’t know if it was intentional or not that House Minority Leader John Boehner’s floor speech opposing health care reform contained the following, but it was unfortunate:
“No, you can’t…
…“The answer is no….
…“No, you cannot…
…“No, you cannot…
…“Hell no, you can’t!…
…“Hell no, you haven’t!
Yet, once the key votes had been cast, enacting the most sweeping expansion of the social safety net since the passage of Medicare, the joyous Democratic caucus erupted in the signature “Yes, We Can” chant. It could have been “Yes, We Did,” but it certainly wasn’t “Hell no, we haven’t.”
Thus, we close the book on an era of endless onslaught on liberal ideology that began on election night in 1980. For thirty years, liberals were on the defensive. Today, we are back on the offensive. Republicans will have to adjust to an entirely new paradigm. It will take them some time to come to terms with the size of their defeat. We can perhaps evaluate the Republicans’ behavior using the Kübler-Ross Model known as the five stages of grief. The Republicans have been in denial for a long time, and they’ve been angry ever since they lost the presidential election. They began bargaining at Obama’s health care summit, where they asked repeatedly for us to ‘start over from scratch with a blank piece of paper.” The next stage is depression: “We can’t repeal it, our country has been taken away from us.”
In reality, the Republicans will stay angry for a long time. They have no intention of reaching ‘acceptance.’ But they have no chance of undoing these reforms, and they will soon realize that a huge percentage of what future congresses will do will be to provide oversight and adjustments to the health care system. The government will be constantly looking for ways to make health care plans more consumer friendly and less costly to the budget. They will not be trying to take health care away from people.
The longer it takes the Republicans to realize this, the more credit the Democrats will get for having passed these reforms. When Republicans complain about the mandate and score political points, the Democrats will offer to create a public option as the only solution to the problem. They are trapped.
This is precisely why they fought against even these modest reforms. We do live in a different country today than we did yesterday. It’s a country that has no use for the old Republican Party.
