The Myth Of The Republican Genesis

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 22rd, 2010


Observations:


1) When a prediction goes awry, the best defense is to move quickly to the next prediction. Several predictions were unveiled on the Morning Joe show the morning after health care passed Congress, and the combining fixes were sent to the Senate to make a once and for all genesis path for health care reform a reality.

The first prediction is that John Cornyn says that the Senate will further attempt to disrupt the eventual passage, which at this point seems like hapless channeling of the tan face of defeat, Mr. Boehner. The second is that the November elections are a plank walk for Democrats. The last and maybe most significant is that Americans will see the passage as a giant loss for freedom.


No one knows if the Republicans in the Senate will have the will to continue a clear loser strategy of obstruction until the imminent defeat is had. But if they do, this is one prediction that will only profit the other side. Republicans have willingly gone the obstruction route for some time. There were times it worked, times it benefited elections, times it seemed like ‘party of no’ was a selling point. But this is a large leap of faith given the signs of a citizenry with an eroded patience, and the law of diminishing return setting in. The real cost of the obstruction is that it’s a sunk cost that just seems ridiculous when the opposite occurrence happens anyway, and seemingly the whole world could’ve predicted the end result. It seems like charades, does that help a party’s relevance?


The elections this coming November could have all looked like the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts. The Republicans could’ve pointed to a case of denial by the Obama administration where the Dems fought the futile fight inefficiently and took the voter for granted in absolute denial of the people’s will to focus on jobs. Now, the Democrats have the giant progress achievement, and it’s the Republicans who seem like the inefficient managers of the message war.


Lawrence O’Donnell has been screaming at the lack of a tax increase messages in the Republican resistance, yet all that has emanated from that resistance is ‘start over’, ‘Americans don’t want it’, and ‘Government takeover’. The days of ‘mission accomplished’ sloganism resonating with a public now forced to take a calculator to any claim from any party are over for now. You need to put math in front of them that they can self verify. Republicans and slogans is an equation about shelf life, sounds good for 90 days, seems to accomplish nothing after, and a distrust of the marketing process has ensued. Not talking about taxes is a gaffe of supernova proportions for the Republican party.


The elections will make the Republicans seem like dime store hoods facing the American public with yet another round of doublespeak hiding their true intent of dissolving the middle class for profit. Running against that health care accomplishment by the Dems is that fake hug scene in Jerry MaGuire. Good luck with that.


So, that leaves freedom. I know the freedom they’re talking about, the freedom to not acquire health insurance if you don’t want to, to pay cash for medical services so that you don’t have to pay into something you don’t use or aren’t interested in. The mandate is troubling, but you have to explain to me which side of the free enterprise system that you’re on. Because taking this argument appears to be playing both sides.


In the free market solution, you are providing a public good via a private mechanism. We learned in the car insurance business, that the uninsured driver is a byproduct of the lack of government involvement in the market, where it’s understood that an individual must be liable for his actions as a driver and automobile owner. So our registrations and police enforcements have enforced a mandate, and allowed the private insurers to work at an efficiency previously unseen.


So were you free when you could not pay for your liability to an emergency rooms mandate to treat you, or were you free when you were forced to cover yourself for that liability, and made the cost of that treatment 1/10th of the first scenario? And would you be more or less free if the undeniable fact that you will eventually need health care was simply transferred to the tax side of the equation and single payer was the law of the land. All the talk of freedom just sounds like the freedom to live in denial of your eventual need for health care.


Three predictions, three new losers, go team wrong!


2) I don’t understand how its not part of the news that the stand alone public option is following this bill along and has 80 sponsors. Alan Grayson has put together the antithesis of all that has gone into the health care bill just passed. Grayson’s plan is all of four pages, accomplishes its goal not of universal coverage but universal extension, and takes an existing system that has a 97% flow through and put its efficiency to work.


The reason I find it so confusing, is that it wouldn’t end private insurance, it would accomplish all of the Republicans goals of strengthening competition. Health care insurers would have to relinquish status quo monopolies and lack of free choice rules, and stateline rules just to be in this game. Most importantly, health insurers would have to come up with some private industry pressure on the cost side of things to compete. Otherwise their business goes away.


5 years after the Grayson bill would become law, the reality on the ground is that the private market would show it’s comparative superiority by providing health care at a cost of around 80% of that offered by the Medicare extension, because they would have to.


Conventional wisdom seems to be you can’t embrace this stuff until it gets enough momentum that you won’t seem like an outlier pointing to it. Morning Joe should be opposite of conventional wisdom on this issue.


3) Lawrence O’Donnell has officially made the genesis point, that Republicans would never initiate health care if they were in control of government. Lawrence included Joe Scarborough specifically. This was not a pleasant moment for Joe Scarborough. It is the simplest logic, and something we have been screaming at the television since before Morning Joe existed. In fact come November, you will be hearing this point a lot.


The Republicans have no idea how to govern anymore. Their idea of governing is to perpetually lower taxes and hope that a nation of bubble driven faux rich people are dumbed down enough to forget that should the sky fall there will be zero support structure. Further they seem like patsies to Wall Street, allowing their apparent allies to drive the economy off of a cliff on their watch. Republicans: Wall Street are not your allies, it’s a relationship of convenience between two liars.


The Democrats are far from innocent in this phenomenon. The deals agreed to in order to pass health care are embarrassing. But the incremental point is a powerful one: we are mature enough to know that while we want more in the direction of governing and providing services, we have to start here and whittle away at the mirage driven denial of our opponents.


Joe Scarborough, you would never as a governor initiate health care coverage, salvage social security, sufficiently tax a population to preserve and improve schooling, or balance any budget based on a baseline of necessity versus a baseline of revenue. You are completely limited to Reagan commercial growth for your ability to run an economy, and thus own the crises you complain about. That makes the complaints you make about the ‘bad bills’ the Democrats used for stimulus and health care part of the party of no. Stop with the mirages, and let’s see some 4 page solutions from you.


Way to go Lawrence, I guess it took a day like today.



That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.