Why will Republicans in D.C. do everything in their power to stop health care reform? Hint: It’s about politics, not policy

I just laid my hands on a revealing memo on President Obama’s current effort to reform health care. It was written just a few months ago by a senior, very influential conservative operative. He calls on Republicans in D.C. to go to the mattresses to stop Obama’s health care reform ideas. Why? Not because health care reform, as proposed by the Democrats, will turn out to be a disaster, or unpopular with the American people. Just the opposite: Republicans need to stop health care reform because it will succeed, and in the long run will re-cement the allegiance of the middle class to the Democratic Party.

Here are some excerpts from what this influential conservative wrote (I have taken the liberty of bolding the most important lines):

“The president will lobby intensively for his plan. It will surely be the central theme of his State of the Union Address in January. Health care reform remains popular in principle. And the Democratic Party has the votes…

“Any Republican urge to negotiate a ‘least bad’ compromise with the Democrats, and thereby gain momentary public credit for helping the president ‘do something’ about health care, should also be resisted. Passage of the Obama health care plan, in any form, would guarantee and likely make permanent an unprecedented federal intrusion into and disruption of the American economy–and the establishment of the largest federal entitlement program since Social Security. Its success would signal a rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment we have begun rolling back that idea in other areas…

“But the Obama proposal is also a serious political threat to the Republican Party. Republicans must therefore clearly understand the political strategy implicit in the Obama plan–and then adopt an aggressive and uncompromising counterstrategy designed to delegitimize the proposal and defeat its partisan purpose…

“If an Obama health care plan succeeds without principled Republican opposition… its passage in the short run will do nothing to hurt (and everything to help) Democratic electoral prospects in 2012. But the long-term political effects of a successful Obama health care bill will be even worse–much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for “security” on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.”

It’s revealing stuff: We better stop health care reform because, if the Democrats pass it, the middle class is going to like it, and our anti-government ideology will be discredited. I couldn’t agree more.

Okay, now that you’ve read the above, I have to confess to a lie. The above excerpt is authentic, except for the fact that I have changed the word “Clinton” to “Obama” and “1996” to “2012.”The excerpts above come from a famous – perhaps infamous – call to arms written by conservative operative Bill Kristol in 1993 when Bill and Hillary were pushing their failed effort to reform health care.

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As Rick Perlstein recounts in the opening of Nixonland, an ambitious and entertaining history of the political ferment of the late 1960s, Lyndon Johnson’s crushing victory over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election represented the apotheosis of liberal self-confidence. Seemingly the entirety of the American political class was in agreement: Conservatism was being relegated Read more…

This was originally posted yesterday.

[Editor's Note: We're not sure where our OMG!Obama column has run off too. Perhaps ObamaNerd is embarrassed about his hero's health care bill—which appears to have abandoned the public option and half the public, namely, women.

Luckily, we're debuting a new Obama-centric opinion column today (it'll have it's own logo and all that soon enough): OMG!Sandeep by PubliCola co-founder Sandeep Kaushik.

Kaushik is the whiskey-loving liberal and Democratic political guru who recently ran the communications game for Dow Constantine’s blowout campaign (and for Mayor Greg Nickels losing—in the primary, ouch—campaign.)

Sandeep is a formidable know-it-all. His column will focus on Obama and national and international politics.

Today he comes out in favor of President Obama's Afghan surge, arguing that the British Empire's success in Afghanistan, rather than the Soviet Union's failure, is the history lesson  to consider.]

It has been a few weeks now since President Barack Obama’s December 1 West Point speech, in which he articulated his reasons for supporting, in the face of Democratic resistance and public unease, a military surge—a semi-occupation, really—in Afghanistan. (Josh had some interesting stuff to say about it here.)

But after a (far too) brief burst of public attention, our deepening involvement in the cauldron of central Asia has again faded from the front pages, replaced by the travails of Tiger Woods, holiday shopping and winter weather stories, and the subversive shenanigans of conservative Democratic senators (Ben Nelson) and their crypto-Republican colleagues (Joe Lieberman – the “I” apparently stands for insurance companies) in the domestic battles over health care reform.

That’s unfortunate, because Obama’s decision to escalate the war is likely the most consequential decision he will make during his presidency. George Bush treated Afghanistan as nothing more than the little blind in his poorly played game of high-stakes Texas Hold ‘Em in Iraq, even though Afghanistan was a necessary war (or, to borrow from Obama’s Dec. 11 speech in Oslo upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, a “just war”), while Iraq was a misguided war of choice.

Even now, as the new president calls for a major military escalation—and an ambitious, fast-paced nation-building exercise—in one of the most hostile, anti-Western regions of the world, the “just war” remains largely a forgotten war.

We forget Afghanistan at our peril. In comparison, the success or failure of health care reform pales by comparison; if Obama fails to get a reasonable bill through Congress, his presidency will survive, just as Bill Clinton’s did. But if his Afghanistan surge fails, it will destroy his administration, as Iraq destroyed the Bush administration. And the geopolitical price of failure there will be more enormous still, because, an American retreat from Afghanistan will further destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan. Afghanistan is now Obama’s war, and he better win it. And Pakistan is his problem, and he needs to solve it.

Read more…

This was originally posted yesterday.

[Editor's Note: We're not sure where our OMG!Obama column has run off too. Perhaps ObamaNerd is embarrassed about his hero's health care bill—which appears to have abandoned the public option and half the public, namely, women.

Luckily, we're debuting a new Obama-centric opinion column today (it'll have it's own logo and all that soon enough): OMG!Sandeep by PubliCola co-founder Sandeep Kaushik.

Kaushik is the whiskey-loving liberal and Democratic political guru who recently ran the communications game for Dow Constantine’s blowout campaign (and for Mayor Greg Nickels losing—in the primary, ouch—campaign.)

Sandeep is a formidable know-it-all. His column will focus on Obama and national and international politics.

Today he comes out in favor of President Obama's Afghan surge, arguing that the British Empire's success in Afghanistan, rather than the Soviet Union's failure, is the history lesson to consider.]

It has been a few weeks now since President Barack Obama’s December 1 West Point speech, in which he articulated his reasons for supporting, in the face of Democratic resistance and public unease, a military surge—a semi-occupation, really—in Afghanistan. (Josh had some interesting stuff to say about it here.)

But after a (far too) brief burst of public attention, our deepening involvement in the cauldron of central Asia has again faded from the front pages, replaced by the travails of Tiger Woods, holiday shopping and winter weather stories, and the subversive shenanigans of conservative Democratic senators (Ben Nelson) and their crypto-Republican colleagues (Joe Lieberman – the “I” apparently stands for insurance companies) in the domestic battles over health care reform.

That’s unfortunate, because Obama’s decision to escalate the war is likely the most consequential decision he will make during his presidency. George Bush treated Afghanistan as nothing more than the little blind in his poorly played game of high-stakes Texas Hold ‘Em in Iraq, even though Afghanistan was a necessary war (or, to borrow from Obama’s Dec. 11 speech in Oslo upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, a “just war”), while Iraq was a misguided war of choice.

Even now, as the new president calls for a major military escalation—and an ambitious, fast-paced nation-building exercise—in one of the most hostile, anti-Western regions of the world, the “just war” remains largely a forgotten war.

We forget Afghanistan at our peril. In comparison, the success or failure of health care reform pales by comparison; if Obama fails to get a reasonable bill through Congress, his presidency will survive, just as Bill Clinton’s did. But if his Afghanistan surge fails, it will destroy his administration, as Iraq destroyed the Bush administration. And the geopolitical price of failure there will be more enormous still, because, an American retreat from Afghanistan will further destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan. Afghanistan is now Obama’s war, and he better win it. And Pakistan is his problem, and he needs to solve it.

Read more…

Former Seattle P-I reporter Kery Murakami, the driving force behind the Seattle Post-Globe online news site, is dialing back his involvement with the site after landing a (paying) job doing communications for the Washington State Budget & Policy Center, a liberal economic and fiscal policy think tank in Seattle.
What this means for the Read more…

In his “Under the Needle” column, former Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Mike Lewis reported on outside the mainstream, quirky and colorful “stories from the streets of Seattle.” Now Lewis, who lost his job and his column when the print edition of the P-I folded this year, has made a career choice that would have made him perfect subject for one of his columns.

Proposed headline: “Under the Needle: Former Newspaper Columnist Buys Neighborhood Dive Where Reporters Rub Elbows with Barflys”.

Lewis, drawing on his P-I severance money, is in the process of buying the funky and frayed-around-the-edges Streamline Tavern, located at 121 W. Mercer in lower Queen Anne (under the Needle, pretty much), where for the past five years he spent his Thursday nights moonlighting as a bartender.
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[Editor's note, this isn't PubliCola's real BarNerd, President Andrew, it's Sandeep, who—it must be acknowledged—is something of real BarNerd himself.]

In his “Under the Needle” column, former Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Mike Lewis reported on outside the mainstream, quirky and colorful “stories from the streets of Seattle.” Now Lewis, who lost his job and his column when the print edition of the P-I folded this year, has made a career choice that would have made him perfect subject for one of his columns.

Proposed headline: “Under the Needle: Former Newspaper Columnist Buys Neighborhood Dive Where Reporters Rub Elbows with Barflys”.

Lewis, drawing on his P-I severance money, is in the process of buying the funky and frayed-around-the-edges Streamline Tavern, located at 121 W. Mercer in lower Queen Anne (under the Needle, pretty much), where for the past five years he spent his Thursday nights moonlighting as a bartender.
Read more…

Back in March of this year PubliCola reported that people close to Crosscut.com, a bastion of high-minded civic commentary, were saying privately that the site might be on its last legs. Founded by David Brewster, who founded the Seattle Weekly in the 1970s and more recently Town Hall, Crosscut was conceived in Read more…

Yesterday afternoon, Editor & Publisher issued their rankings of traffic at newspaper web sites in May. It contained some very good news for the Seattle P-I.com, which, despite the shuttering of their print edition in March, continues to draw substantial web traffic. They ranked 28th on the E&P list, with just under 1.5 Read more…

Josh was getting a little lonely all by himself at PubliCola headquarters, so we decided to double the size of our staff. Erica C. Barnett, news editor of the Stranger (a friend and former colleague of both Josh and I) will be coming on board at PubliCola ASAP as News Editor. Christopher Frizzelle, the Read more…

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