Over the past several months, Republicans have been blasted by the political left for being the ‘Party of No‘, for spreading disinformation, and for trying to kill health care reform when they should be trying to help President Obama fix the system. It is clear that most Americans believe the system needs reforming, but the nation remains split on whether President Obama and the Democrat Congress is on the right track to do so. This begs the question, exactly what would GOP-care look like if the Republicans were in control of Congress?
In an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was asked just how Republicans would define a “win” on health care reform.
Winning is stopping and starting over and getting it right. I don’t know anybody in my Republican conference in the Senate who’s in favor of doing nothing on health care.
Now, in fairness to the Republicans, it is hard to ask them to devote the time to crafting an alternative bill when they don’t have the votes to pass it, but they cannot simply campaign against Obamacare if they want to be seen as credible on health care reform and a credible alternative to lead the nation after the 2010 elections. In a post on The Daily Beast, Denis Calabrese - former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Dick Armey, lays out a game plan for Republicans in 2010. It’s no surprise that coming up with a proactive health care strategy is a key element of that plan.
Have Real Policy Alternatives: Obama is almost right about one thing: The GOP has not had a real alternative to socialized medicine on the table for many, many years. In fact the same can be said for a host of other issues. Independent voters always want to evaluate two different approaches. If they are judging between a flawed solution and no solution, people will tend to pick the flawed solution. Something beats nothing almost every time. The GOP must put as much effort behind selling their approach and contrasting it with Obama’s as they do trashing the president’s proposals, no matter how well-deserved.
So far, it has been admittedly difficult to tell where Republicans stand on health care reform - outside of wanting to defeat Democrat proposals for it - and just what a conservative reform bill might look like. House and Senate Republicans did put bills forward earlier this summer, but there was little cohesion between their offerings and the bills showed a clear division between conservatives on the issue.
Groups like the Heritage Foundation and conservative publications like The American Spectator backed the Patients’ Choice Act favored by Republican senator Tom Coburn and considered by critics on the political right to be an amalgamation of conservative and liberal ideas including health insurance exchanges and a watered-down public option. Center-right conservatives favored Republican Senator Jim DeMint’s Health Care Freedom Plan which called for the very conservative ideas of health care vouchers. Center-right leader Grover Norquist believes compromising with a Democrat party that wants government-run health care isn’t an option and went so far as to compare the Coburn bill to selective amputation in an interview with HealthCareHorseRace.com back in August.
Politicians are particularly prone to how about if we just cut off one finger and you should appreciate all my work to protect your second finger. If you’re going to run a campaign where you have to get popular support, we need to be the no fingers cut off leaders.
Getting one finger cut off is the prelude to them coming back for the other finger. That’s why the DeMint proposal – which is not a compromise but is a bold, conservative, free-market approach, is so helpful. The guys who say lets cut off one finger instead of two or three, think that’s the only alternative way to do it.
This week’s mark-up of Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus‘ America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 promises to be entertaining political theater, but it also promises to show just how divided the Republicans continue to be on the issue of health care reform. Of the 564 amendments filed to the bill ahead of mark-up, those filed by Republicans show little in the way of a united front. Republican Orrin Hatch proposed 47 amendments to the bill and co-sponsored an additional 5 amendments. Even “moderate” Republican Olympia Snowe filed 21 amendments of her own along with another 5 she co-sponsored. Republican amendments run the gamut from Jon Kyl’s amendment to prevent “the federal government’s takeover of health care” to Snowe’s amendment proposing a trigger mechanism for the public option should cooperatives fail to insure 95 percent of Americans.
Getting back to our original question: exactly what would GOP-care look like? It is clearly too early to tell, but defeating the Democrats in this debate and in the 2010 midterm elections could very well depend on figuring it out sooner than later.
