Friday, March 29, AD 2024 7:05am

A Republican Defeat?

 

 

From a conservative Republican perspective there seems to be little good from the outcome of the shutdown fight.  ObamaCare remains funded, and that was the chief goal that concerned most conservative Republicans.  However, sometimes it is a good idea to take a look at an event from the eyes of an adversary.  Here is what things look like to liberal Peter Beinart at The Daily Beast:

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the press is missing this because most of the press is covering the current standoff more as politics than policy. If your basic question is “which party is winning?” then it’s easy to see the Republicans as losing, since they’re the ones suffering in the polls. But the partisan balance of power and the ideological balance of power are two completely different things. The Nixon years were terrible for the Democratic Party but quite good for progressive domestic policy. The Clinton years were, in important ways, the reverse. The promise of the Obama presidency was not merely that he’d bring Democrats back to power. It was that he’d usher in the first era of truly progressive public policy in decades. But the survival of Obamacare notwithstanding, Obama’s impending “victory” in the current standoff moves us further away from, not closer to, that goal.

 

It’s not just that Obama looks likely to accept the sequester cuts as the basis for future budget negotiations. It’s that while he’s been trying to reopen the government and prevent a debt default, his chances of passing any significant progressive legislation have receded. Despite overwhelming public support, gun control is dead. Comprehensive immigration reform, once considered the politically easy part of Obama’s second term agenda, looks unlikely. And the other items Obama trumpeted in this year’s state of the union address—climate change legislation, infrastructure investment, universal preschool, voting rights protections, a boost to the minimum wage—have been largely forgotten.

 

Go here to read the rest.  I am not entirely convinced.  However, it is good to recall while conservatives may be unhappy at the outcome of the shutdown, liberals also have reasons to be unhappy.  Uber smart liberals might have one final reason to be concerned about the outcome:  that the Republicans did not succeed either in defunding or, more realistically, delaying ObamaCare.  ObamaCare remains unpopular and is becoming increasingly so, with the roll out debacle, and, more importantly, sticker shock, as even liberals are reeling from the size of the monthly payments and the size of deductibles.  From an editorial in the Chicago Tribune, Obama’s home town paper which endorsed him twice:

Wait. It gets worse. Those who have managed to browse the marketplace have often been hit by sticker shock. Take Adam Weldzius, a nurse practitioner and single father from Carpentersville. He sought the same level of coverage on the exchange as he and his 7-year-old daughter have now, with the same insurer and the same network of doctors and hospitals. At best, Weldzius found, his monthly premium of $233 would more than double. If he chose a plan priced at the same level, the annual deductible would be $12,700, more than three times his current $3,500 deductible.

“I believe everybody should be able to have health insurance, but at the same time, I’m being penalized. And for what?” Weldzius told the Tribune’s Peter Frost. “For someone who’s always had insurance, who’s always taken care of myself, now I have to change my plan?”

ObamaCare is shaping up to be a domestic policy debacle of Biblical proportions and the Democrats own every inch of it.  If the Republicans had succeeded in killing or delaying it, Democrats could have gone into 2014 whipping up their low information voters with tales about how Republicans took away their “cheap” health care.  Now it is the Democrats who will receive voter wrath for sky high premiums, huge deductibles, and taxpayer penalties if they do not get insurance.  Young low information voters especially, who voted for Obama twice, will be taking it in the neck financially, and they will be learning an age old lesson:  ignorance isn’t usually bliss, but rather disaster.  This may be the most important single result of the outcome of the budget shutdown fight.

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Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Thursday, October 17, AD 2013 8:52am

I think it was Jonah Goldberg who pointed out in a GLoP culture podcast that it seems like every time Obama gets what he wants, it blows up in his face… so maybe what we should be doing is stop fighting him so much.

Of course, this would all be a lot easier if we could get back to federalism. (that is, let each state be as progressive or conservative as they want, and let everyone move to the state most befitting them)

And if you’re a leftist about to protest on how this needs to be applied across all states, congrats, that just made you the modern day puritan.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Thursday, October 17, AD 2013 4:31pm

The entire “shutdown” was a Democrat stunt. The lapdog Democrat media always blames the doltish Republicans for these shutdowns and gutless Republicans trash real conservatives who want to stand for shrinking government.

McConnell needs to be primaried out of his job. So does Gramnesty. The dead Strom Thurmond would do a better job in the Senate now than Gramnesty does.

Going into his sixth year in office – it is only two months away – the Obumbler Tyranny has never passed a budget. Hannity, whom I do not care for, played a radio clip Wednesday afternoon and there were several low information voters – oh, hell, let’s call them dimwits because that is what they are – and they blamed Bush for the current problems. For laughs, I invite everyone to check out the Letters to the Editor of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. The levels of stupidity are amazing. I don’t know how some of those people ever figured out how to operate a doorknob.

I want Obumblercare to blow up in the faces of the Commucrat Party. I want it to stain every Commucrat and every other lemming whoever supported it and that goes for Carol Keenan.

Don the Kiwi
Don the Kiwi
Thursday, October 17, AD 2013 4:34pm

Voters vote by their pocket.
Politicians offer bribes – financial benefit bribes – lower taxes, better social security payments, free this, free that.
So when the useful idiots realise they are being creamed of their hard earned wages, and for no increased benefit but in many cases reductions, the impact at the ballot box will be significant.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Thursday, October 17, AD 2013 4:51pm

Don, your point is a good one, but…..
there are people in this nation who will never pull a voting lever for anything but a Commucrat, such as 95% of blacks even those who are married with good jobs, homes and kids. Auto workers – Commucrats, even as the Commucrats seek to destroy the auto industry with ridiculous gas mileage requirements. Unionized government workers – they exist to elect Commucrats. Public school teachers – see above.

The private sector employee whose paycheck is not assaulted by the likes of Richard Trumka – the fat, obnoxious Pittsburgh area native who runs the AFL CIO – likely does not vote for the Commucrats. Stupid young people who are told what to think by modern TV, movies and music (especially single young women), illegal alien Hispanics, blacks, government workers……..tend to be loyal Obumblerbots and Commucrats. Obumbler cobbled them together and got himself elected twice.

What Obumblercare will likely do is annoy enough young people to stay in Mom’s basement and not to vote for the Commucrat in 2014 and most certainly in 2016.

Nothing will improve for the better, however, with McCain, McConnell, Gramnesty, Boehner and Cantor still in the United States Congress. In their own way, they are as bad as Obumbler.

Pat
Pat
Thursday, October 17, AD 2013 6:55pm

Waiting periods, coverage issues, quality of care, and certain limits will be a learning experience. There are corporate and certainly government exemptions for those who want to control the who’s and how’s of their own healthcare, which is telling. Elections … parties ,,, my eyesight is dimming.

J.A.C.
J.A.C.
Friday, October 18, AD 2013 4:28am

here in the united kingdom we have government run health care and I can tell you….it does not work….even those in parliament say that it does not work and they even told obummer that it does not work so why would that moron obummer do exactly what is not working is beyond me…other than the fact he is only in the white house because of his colour…my opinion of course…

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, October 18, AD 2013 8:29am

Power and Control is why he does it J.A.C.

For your own good of course!

WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Friday, October 18, AD 2013 2:50pm

Fortunately, when the Jackass Party faithful don’t get what they were told they would get, they stay home. Watch for a Zimmerman-like incident come next October-November that the blabbermouths will hype to try to rally the racialist mob. It’s all they’ll be able to do.

And this made me grin :”Despite overwhelming public support, gun control is dead.” I don’t know what polls he’s reading, but it never was popular except among the media bobbing heads and east coast soccer mommies. If there had been any real momentum, we’d have seen legislation.

One more thing – who else noticed that at roughly the same time, the Senate voted against ratifying the UN Arms Treaty? It would be interesting to see if there was any vote trading.

Mary De Voe
Saturday, October 19, AD 2013 11:41am

Half the population is receiving government assistance in one form or another. For some ungodly reason the people believe that this largess and generosity is coming from the Obama administration. Now, people are being seduced to believe that Obamacare is going to give them care and subsidize their premiums. Government in and of itself owns nothing. The generosity and assistance granted to people in serious need is from the taxpayers. Taxes belong to the tax payers even as the taxes are administered by the administration. In other words, no matter what party is elected into office, the generosity and assistance, of necessity, and in the good will of the people of this nation, will continue if not increase.
Of the public lands and waterways, these like all public squares are owned in joint and common tenancy by each and every citizen, the rich, the not so rich, the young, and the old, not only because of the taxes which are paid by the people, but because the sovereign personhood of every individual constitutes this nation. The sovereign personhood of every individual constitutes the president and the presidency. You own it all, and I own it all, in joint and common tenancy, in personal and particular responsibility, and in corporate patriotism.”E Pluribus Unum” “from many (people) comes one (people)”.

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