The Left has impressively completed a quick transition in the last few weeks. They’ve gone from 1) promoting Obamacare, to 2) defending Obamacare, to 3) disowning Obamacare. Watching their interviews and speeches during the course of the week was like watching an episode of Maury Povich in which they suddenly learned that “Obama’s baby” (as it was affectionately called just last month) is actually the legislative love-child of conservatism and capitalism. Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor who helped craft both Romneycare and Obamacare, appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews, and was asked to give his opinion on what it is that the Republicans are “angry about” in regard to Obamacare:
“The simple facts are Obamacare is built on Romneycare, and Romneycare is built on conservative notions proposed by the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990’s to oppose the Clinton health care reform...Romney adopted those ideas and made them the centerpiece of his law. President Obama, despite the fact that in the election he was opposed to the mandate, recognized it was a system that had worked well in Massachusetts...He, to his credit, changed his views, adopted the mandate, and once he put his name to it, suddenly the right wing disliked it...Suddenly it’s the devil’s work. I don’t see any argument other than it’s just ugly partisan politics.”
Gruber is selling himself short; his facts may be “simple,” but evading the last twenty years of history in order to find them, rip them from their context, and smuggle them back into the present discussion, sounds anything but simple. “Smuggling” is apparently Gruber’s specialty, because, according to his claims, he’s been able to get signature health care laws, based on “conservative notions,” past Democrat-controlled legislatures. I think that I speak for all conservatives when I say that we would love to know his secret, but I don’t know that for sure---only Gruber has the ability to identify which conservatives speak for all the rest. That ability must come from the same source as his ability to know what people want in regard to health care plans better than they do.
Gruber is nothing more than an ideological bootlegger; tearing obscure, twenty-year-old labels from a political product that never made it to the market, and passing it off as brand name conservatism. His argument is specious to its vacuous core, but the Republican Establishment aids and abets in the bootlegging of fundamental conservative principles when it sacrifices a clear ideology in pursuit of a broad appeal. To borrow their “big tent” metaphor, they focus on the size of the tent at the expense of the strength of the supporting poles and the sturdiness of the foundation.
Stuart Butler, the author of the early ‘90’s Heritage proposal, was attempting to seek a “viable alternative” to the Clinton plan, which necessitated that he design his plan in accordance with the premise that those who wanted health insurance, but could not afford it, would have it provided to them via some form of a societal subsidy. If Butler were attempting to simply “oppose” the Clinton plan, he would have rejected that premise---any plan that accepts that premise is based on socialistic notions, and Butler’s goal was simply designed to mitigate the economic effects of those ill-conceived notions. He claims that he was attempting to design a plan that would avoid the insurance “death spiral” that would occur if the number of sick people who were in need of health care, but couldn’t afford insurance without government assistance, were not balanced out by healthy people who could afford it. While his plan was, at best, a lesser evil, and he has long since disavowed it and stood against the individual mandate, recent events have shown that his concern was well founded.
The “Butler lesson” is that, when it comes to compromise, Republicans are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Where there is disagreement on basic principles, no compromise is possible. The fundamental essence of a basic principle (in the political context) is that it is an initial source from which a political value system flows; just as with a building, the foundation cannot be open to compromise without also compromising, as in undermining, the stability of the rest of the structure which depends on that foundation in order to keep from crumbling.
I can’t entirely blame Gruber for believing that “conservative notions” are nothing more than slight modifications, seemingly conceived of and applied arbitrarily to legislation that is built on the Democrats’ fundamental principles. The Republican Party spent the vast majority of the last 80 years in the minority. Over that time, the Party retained only the semblance of its pro-capitalist/pro-constitutional identity, and primarily became a political support group for those who were opposed to particular aspects of Progressivism, like family values, taxes, spending, foreign policy, regulation, abortion, etc...
Members of the political establishment soon realized that they could become a big fish in a smaller pond by joining the Republican Party, while using whatever aspect of Progressivism that they opposed in order to leverage concessions from the Democrats, enriching themselves, but never truly threatening the “progress” of socialism. These opportunistic politicians joined with the disaffected political souls wandering toward the Republican Party muttering their own political version of the serenity prayer. They prayed that the base would simply accept the progression toward socialism as that which “cannot be changed”---and thus free them from the burden of truly opposing it; they prayed for the base’s courage to take a stand when they truly needed them to; and they prayed that the base would not question their wisdom when adopting the Left’s principles in order to “win elections.”
If we continue down this path, America will soon be as serene as the aftermath of a tornado.
“The simple facts are Obamacare is built on Romneycare, and Romneycare is built on conservative notions proposed by the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990’s to oppose the Clinton health care reform...Romney adopted those ideas and made them the centerpiece of his law. President Obama, despite the fact that in the election he was opposed to the mandate, recognized it was a system that had worked well in Massachusetts...He, to his credit, changed his views, adopted the mandate, and once he put his name to it, suddenly the right wing disliked it...Suddenly it’s the devil’s work. I don’t see any argument other than it’s just ugly partisan politics.”
Gruber is selling himself short; his facts may be “simple,” but evading the last twenty years of history in order to find them, rip them from their context, and smuggle them back into the present discussion, sounds anything but simple. “Smuggling” is apparently Gruber’s specialty, because, according to his claims, he’s been able to get signature health care laws, based on “conservative notions,” past Democrat-controlled legislatures. I think that I speak for all conservatives when I say that we would love to know his secret, but I don’t know that for sure---only Gruber has the ability to identify which conservatives speak for all the rest. That ability must come from the same source as his ability to know what people want in regard to health care plans better than they do.
Gruber is nothing more than an ideological bootlegger; tearing obscure, twenty-year-old labels from a political product that never made it to the market, and passing it off as brand name conservatism. His argument is specious to its vacuous core, but the Republican Establishment aids and abets in the bootlegging of fundamental conservative principles when it sacrifices a clear ideology in pursuit of a broad appeal. To borrow their “big tent” metaphor, they focus on the size of the tent at the expense of the strength of the supporting poles and the sturdiness of the foundation.
Stuart Butler, the author of the early ‘90’s Heritage proposal, was attempting to seek a “viable alternative” to the Clinton plan, which necessitated that he design his plan in accordance with the premise that those who wanted health insurance, but could not afford it, would have it provided to them via some form of a societal subsidy. If Butler were attempting to simply “oppose” the Clinton plan, he would have rejected that premise---any plan that accepts that premise is based on socialistic notions, and Butler’s goal was simply designed to mitigate the economic effects of those ill-conceived notions. He claims that he was attempting to design a plan that would avoid the insurance “death spiral” that would occur if the number of sick people who were in need of health care, but couldn’t afford insurance without government assistance, were not balanced out by healthy people who could afford it. While his plan was, at best, a lesser evil, and he has long since disavowed it and stood against the individual mandate, recent events have shown that his concern was well founded.
The “Butler lesson” is that, when it comes to compromise, Republicans are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Where there is disagreement on basic principles, no compromise is possible. The fundamental essence of a basic principle (in the political context) is that it is an initial source from which a political value system flows; just as with a building, the foundation cannot be open to compromise without also compromising, as in undermining, the stability of the rest of the structure which depends on that foundation in order to keep from crumbling.
I can’t entirely blame Gruber for believing that “conservative notions” are nothing more than slight modifications, seemingly conceived of and applied arbitrarily to legislation that is built on the Democrats’ fundamental principles. The Republican Party spent the vast majority of the last 80 years in the minority. Over that time, the Party retained only the semblance of its pro-capitalist/pro-constitutional identity, and primarily became a political support group for those who were opposed to particular aspects of Progressivism, like family values, taxes, spending, foreign policy, regulation, abortion, etc...
Members of the political establishment soon realized that they could become a big fish in a smaller pond by joining the Republican Party, while using whatever aspect of Progressivism that they opposed in order to leverage concessions from the Democrats, enriching themselves, but never truly threatening the “progress” of socialism. These opportunistic politicians joined with the disaffected political souls wandering toward the Republican Party muttering their own political version of the serenity prayer. They prayed that the base would simply accept the progression toward socialism as that which “cannot be changed”---and thus free them from the burden of truly opposing it; they prayed for the base’s courage to take a stand when they truly needed them to; and they prayed that the base would not question their wisdom when adopting the Left’s principles in order to “win elections.”
If we continue down this path, America will soon be as serene as the aftermath of a tornado.
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