The GOP’s Big Mistake and Arianna Huffington’s Conclusion

According to the non-partisan FactCheck.org (Annenberg Center), tort reform would cut a whopping .5% of the money spent on health care. And having lived in eight states over the past 12 years, I’ve never found health insurance particularly cheaper in one state than another. There’s nothing stopping cut-rate insurance companies from competing in any state market — except that insurance companies have essentially established a long price-fixing policy to keep the prices high, blaming the costs on soaring doctor and hospital bills, which are blamed on malpractice suits (on which, see above).

Has anyone considered that the Republican plan was to do nothing?

The GOP’s big mistake is deeper. They are uninterested in responsible governance. They have proved it every day in every way since 1994. They are today the party of grumpy white men and crazed Alaskans. I read a letter to the editor yesterday that said “I’m glad I have health care now, but I’d rather have my freedom.” The GOP could spend some time educating its base away from their baseness. But they don’t. Why? And why are (a tiny and dwindling, but psychologically intriguing group of) well educated people still self-identifying with this crowd?

This law is a bad bill period. This country is not in a financial position to fund it.What is sad is the comments I read above mine. Forces of darkness? Grumpy white men? How ignorant.53% of Americans pay all the taxes which means 47% do not. That tells me why our elections are always so close. Of course the Democrats tell their base the government can provide all their needs. Its their base.

Recently I was reminded of Noel Annan’s comment that liberals tend to think that the difference between liberals and conservatives is one of compassion, whereas conservatives tend to think it’s a matter of what one thinks it’s feasible to do. The current crop of Republican politicians seem determined to prove him wrong. It’s one thing for Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and other mean-spirited embodiments of selfishness to be blatantly against social justice; they don’t run for office. A large TV or radio audience that keeps the sponsors happy is still a pitifully small number at the polls. How the GOP can be so dim and yet remain in existence is a mystery to me. I don’t mean to be overly pessimistic about political parties; I’m no dyed-in-the-wool liberal or conservative or anything else, but the Republican Party’s major function recently seems to be to help the Democratic Party look good.

“Social justice” sounds good as an idea, but when it comes to policies associated with it, one has to concede that opponents to them do have some principle on their side. You may disagree with them, but too many comments here cast the opposition in demonic or racial or pathological terms. Let’s not say that the detractors of progressivism equal the Powers of Darkness.As for governance duties, sometimes a responsible position is for leaders to say “No, we’re not going to do this.” To take one distant example: does anybody think Gerald Ford was wrong to reject New York’s appeal for Federal cash? Do the government activists here extend the call to foreign affairs?

To MB’s comparison of Gerald Ford’s rejection of “New York State’s appeal for Federal cash” to the passage of health care legislation: Huh? That’s a comparison? The telling point is that the majority–soon to be a very considerable majority–are now, suddenly, in favor of the bill, and see the Republican party and its apologists on the wrong side of history, impotently sputtering as they are passed by and passed over like those who opposed Social Security, Civil Rights, and Medicare.

If the Dems were smart, they would create a super ambitious education agenda. In my opinion, the best way to combat the Republicans is to educate the ignorant base that actually believes people like Glen Beck (and Rush L) instead of recognizing him for what he is…a crazy person or a brilliant salesman with selling crazy ideas. Perhaps I am being ideal, but I believe that education is the key to our economic recovery (and future) and just might get folks to recognize that they should really vote for a really smart person with a vision for our future vs. someone you want to have beers with at the corner bar or go huntin’ with.

There’s just way too much demonizing, and from both sides of the fence. One of the problems with demonizing aka mudslinging is the impossibility of staying clean. Defining “social justice” can be as difficult as defining “conservatism.” Instant extremism isn’t exactly the path to truth either. The mindless tendency of too many on the Left and on the Right to reduce anything one’s opponent says to parody and to then pretend that dealing with a strawman is dealing with the real issues is all too common and all too futile. There seems to be almost a reflexive refusal to consider the possibility that reasonable people could disagree. This is intellectually dishonest, as well as just plain dishonest. At bottom it seems to me a combination of (excuse me) sins, such as arrogance, anger, greed, gluttony, envy, and sloth. (The lust is doubtless expressed in other ways.)

The republican problem is that they have been hijacked by the evil little men of demagogue radio/TV/blogs. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, (to a great extent O’Reilly) are demagogue entertainers recently joined by Sarah Palin. It isn’t that they are ignorant, it is that they just don’t care. Rush was and is a drug addict. It simply doesn’t matter to him what he says. What matters to him and the rest of them is that they make millions of dollars for themselves. Most in academia are well aware that what a professor won’t do to get a $5 million RO1 grant is hard to imagine. Magnify that to hundreds of millions and you have these demagogues on the “right” wing. You see, Rush, Glenn, Sarah, et al. win even if the republican party goes down in flames. They win no matter what, because what makes them rich is their base of listeners. That base of listeners is a demographic that advertisers sell to. It’s all about ratings so the demagogues can rake in huge amounts of money. Responsibility, truth, even what is right for the republican party has nothing to do with it. They are simply media whores, out for themselves.

Jontoradze, you had me until your last sentence, which seems to me unduly offensive, ill-considered, and blatantly unfair. What exactly do you have against whores that would cause you to besmirch them with such a comparison?

MB: since Teddy Roosevelt, the Republicans have always been on the wrong side of history. What has a Republican administration ever done, except build the interstate highway system during the Eisenhower administration?

#18/dank48: You are absolutely correct. Many of us who teach what’s variously known as “persuasion” or “rhetoric” would evaluate rather negatively a student paper that fails to give fair credence to opposing points of view, so why do we accept this tendency in the public sphere and why do we make these same kinds of statements ourselves?

As a Massachusetts resident I know a thing or two about the type of healthcare “reform” called Obamacare (modeled on the Massachusetts plan). If Massachusetts is the model, I can tell you that the majority of Americans will see their insurance premiums go up and their benefits go down with this new law. That’s exactly what is going on in our state. For my husband and me, annual premiums (we now have a basic plan with a $4,000 annual deductible) are more then $12,000 a year (we have to purchase and pay for our own plan since neither of our employers offer health insurance). Before, we were covered under my husband’s plan (a very good plan with low deductibles–$500 a year–and low co-pays, even for prescription coverage), and after he left that company we were on COBRA for 18 months. Since the company he worked for previously was based in Pennsylvania, we had BC/BS from that state, where our COBRA payments were less than $800 a month–again, for a far superior plan. To obtain the same plan in Massachusetts would have cost us more than $1,400 a month.So, take it from someone who is already feeling the effects of Obamacare–not only will your premiums go up, your coverage (for a person who already has health insurance) will go down, and your taxes will be higher. Don’t just take it from me–our state’s auditor (a Democrat) says the only reason Massachusetts isn’t bleeding red with mandated healthcare is that the federal government is bailing us out. He expects the state to be bankrupt due to healthcare costs in the next 5 years. he also asks who will bail out the federal government?To set the record straight, the Republicans DID have a plan–the Democrats just refused to listen to it. We DO want healthcare reform, just not the bloated and super expensive plan that is called Obamacare. Why not go back to the drawing board and get bipartisan buy-in. Take it slow and do it right. Even now we are seeing ‘mistakes” in what was the law was intended to do. That’s why the great majority of the country is so frustrated.

Re #29: Nice quote. But if–I figure there’s a chance–it’s supposed to besmirch the Democrats about being “Machiavellian,” it should be noted that, in the context of Machiavelli’s times, “The Prince” was a somewhat progressive document. Quoting the rest of the oft-cited passage might have mitigated my suspicion: “… this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had the actual experience of it.”Re #25:It’s, well, kind of cute actually that Prof. Bauerlein, in correcting adhop on the Republicans’ “always [being] on the wrong side of history,” points out the Nixon Administration’s work on affirmative action, environmentalism, and funding for the arts and humanities. Today, these are basically Democratic Party agenda items that would get you thrown out of a Republican Party convention and bring you an even rougher fate in the Tea Party wing of the GOP.That a putative small-government conservative would have to cite basically Democratic Party platform planks in order to demonstrate that the Republicans aren’t always wrong, speaks volumes about the sad, garrulous, reactionary and selfish state of the GOP today.Speaking of chances, there’s probably a small one that Prof. Bauerlein will argue that he meant the not-wrong side of history entirely neutrally, i.e., merely that the Nixon Administratin favored early on policies that became entrenched-establishment later, and not that they were necessarily good policies. (I won’t believe him.)

That was the point of comment 25, goxewu–to cite some Republican initiatives that adhop would support.

I don’t believe in a right side or a wrong side of history. Adhop found only one policy of a Republican administration to praise, and I suggested others he might praise. For the record, I think Nixon’s affirmative action programs were misconceived, his environentalism well-conceived, and his funding for the arts a bit indiscriminate, although NEA funding in certain fields was quite successful in their long-term impact (just ask G. Keillor).

I believe in the moral meaning of this and that event, but the “sides” division is too neat and crisp, and it has been cited too many times by people in the course of advocating current positions.