While polls taken on the eve of the historic health care reform vote were inconclusive about whether a majority of Americans supported passage, they were consistent in showing that a majority either supported passage or opposed passage because the bill wasn’t liberal enough. Either way, however, while it’s true that the country is very polarized on the issue, it’s also clear that this comment is false:
Echoing many on the right, Newt Gingrich today sent an email claiming, “In every recent poll the vast majority of Americans opposed this monstrosity.”
A majority supported the bill in the Kaiser Foundation and The Economist polls.
Does this close split mean that the bill is firmly in the mainstream of political thinking on health care policy? That depends on what you mean. It will be an ongoing irony, as Brad DeLong points out, that Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney passed a version of ObamaCare in 2004 when he was the governor of Massachusetts. The outlines of ObamaCare were first proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation in the early 1990’s. The idea being that a personal mandate was a form of personal responsibility that was preferable to a nanny-state that just hands health care to you without any effort on your part. If you take the kind of “serious” people who discuss health care policy in Washington think tanks then ‘yes’ these reforms are solidly in the middle (or mainstream). But no Republicans in either house of Congress voted for them. So, is it fair to say that the reforms are mainstream but the Republican Party is way out on a limb?
I think it is fair to say that.
The Republicans didn’t have a mainstream alternative on health care because Obama proposed a plan that, aside from the public option, was indistinguishable from what their ‘wonks’ came up with the last time Washington tried to reform our health system. Even when Obama agreed to drop the public option, no Republicans could be persuaded to vote for his bill. So, their opposition was purely political in nature, and grounded in their belief that granting subsidies to people to buy health care and expanding Medicaid will make the Democrats more popular and expand their permanent base.
Calling your own analysts’ plans ‘socialist’ and a ‘monstrosity’ is dishonest. And it strikes me as a real problem that the Republicans have poisoned their own base’s minds about the nature of the health care reforms. They can’t walk this back now and govern responsibly without being seen as sell-outs and commie-appeasers.
I don’t know what mainstream is. Is it the meeting point between right and left wonks? Is it the point where a small group from the minority is willing to cross the aisle? A large group? Or, is it when the polls show the country almost perfectly polarized on an issue? Is that the sweet spot in the middle we should all be shooting for? Broder? Anyone?
