A big thanks to Elena for this gem. She says that David Frum was subsequently fired from his job at American Enterprise Institute for expressing this opinion. How many of us could have easily have said this:
Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.
It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:
(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.
(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.
So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:
A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.
At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.
Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.
This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.
Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.
Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.
No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?
I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.
So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.
Follow David Frum on Twitter: @davidfrum
Is there truth in what David Frum says? It seems to make sense to me. I keep asking where all the Republicans were for the past 8 years. No one answers me. So I guess this is it. I would think it would have been better to work together than to not work together.
Perhaps I should send him the link to the Coffee Party website? coffeepartyusa.com.
Wow. Having read that I can see why he got fired; I’d support that move. You give a mouse a cookie and he’ll just want some milk. There is very little to no room for compromise on this issue.
So Marin, is it better to get trounced or to be reasonable enough so someone gives you some input?
If it means staning on my two feet rather than taking a knee to a tyrannical government –I’ll take trounced.
I don’t think America was meant to work in a ‘winner takes all ‘ way. I think we were mean to to compromise and come together with something we can all live with.
Your idea of tyranny and mine are very different.
Did you see the video on the rules of the Senate that Rez sent us? It speaks of this idea of compromise.
This guy has the necessary resume to prove his conservative outlook, including stints as an economic speechwriter for G. W. Bush, a senior foreign policy adviser to Guiliani’s presidential campaign as well as being a fellow at the American Enterprise institute. Yet he points out in his opinion that Republicans went for the “Waterloo” minute and lost and he’s fired. Shows how rigid the Republican party has become, not reserving any place for varieties of opinions. The tent gets smaller when you start kicking your own out of it.
Is that inclusive of a vote with no republican support? Was that what our founders intended? That a party holding a majority could do what it wanted to without regard to the minority? It’s interesting to see how this all plays out.
The stroy about Frum from the The Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-26/inside-david-frums-bitter-exit/
Insiders at AEI, to whom I spoke at length, told me that Frum’s version of the story is “quite, quite untrue” (as one put it). The truth, in fact, is that he was asked—unsuccessfully—to pull his weight at the think-tank. A fellow told me: “David didn’t come to the office very much, and long before his blog, Arthur [Brooks, the AEI president] arranged a lunch with him to talk about coming more often to the office to earn his salary.
“David had been asked to do that in the past, and hadn’t done it. Arthur said, ‘You keep the current deal [$100,000 per annum] and you come in more.’ Frum basically said ‘no.’” (Frum did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.)
Frum says that the was fired because of coercion by donors upset because he wasn’t conservative enough. Apparently, AEI employs other writers more liberal than he.
If the above article is true, of course he wouldn’t want the story to come out that he is lazy.
@ Cargo,
I can’t sit in judgement of him. We all know of colleagues and bosses who would say you walk on water and others who would sell you out in a heartbeat. So I have to say that his work ethic is unknown to me. I wonder what Bush would have to say?
More importantly, is he assessing the situation fairly? I thought it was an interesting point of view from someone with strong Republican credentials.
Everyone who has ever considered themselves a Republican at some point in their life knows that the party has undergone tremendous changes. The current party seems to be the party of bullies. I don’t have to dig deep. I can just look at how local Republicans spoke about Senator McCain.
If David Frum is to be believed, there was opportunity for input. Did you read the article, Marin?
Also, did you see the video on the role of the Senate? That addresses your question.
I asked you if you would prefer to be stomped on rather than compromise or negotiate. You said you would prefer to be stomped on than negotiate. If that is how you feel, then …sorry…this sounds harsh…but you get what you deserve.
I feel certain the founders certainly didn’t expect people to refuse to deal with each other, or at least collectively, that was their feeling. What you are suggesting is dictator-esque in practice. You don’t like the plan. You refuse to sit down at the table. The other guy is holding more trump cards. You lose. Then you cry foul play? I don’t think so. That isnt how it works.
As usual, I am agreeing with Lucky Duck. Some things never change.
Frum is just an opinion. Opinions are a dime a dozen in Washington. So are resumes like his. Why do some seem to accord him deference as a sort of political Nostradamus? Easy. Here’s a Republican who speaks out against the mainstream of his party. Elevate him to guru status and use him to hammer the Repubs, thereby sowing all kinds of confusion and self-doubt.
David Horotwitz calls him a “reflexive contrarian, doing his best to be the Media’s Favorite Republican by tearing down other Republicans … He hasn’t found much of an audience –though MSNBC loves him this week.”
A Wall Street Journal editorial on 23 March: “Mr. Frum now makes his living as the Media’s go-basher of fellow Republicans, which is a stock Beltway role. But he’s peddling bad revisionist history that would have been far worse politics. The truth is that Democrats never had any intentions of working with Republicans except to pick off two or three Senators and call it ‘bipartisanship.’ This worked for Democrats on the stimulus, and they had hoped to do it again on health care…In the House, Republicans were frozen out from the start….”
Frum has his defenders, of course. But it is clear that he is not standing on a pedestal receiving the adulation of one and all. He is very controversial. I for one could not see much of a willingness to compromise anywhere in the Democrat operation. Didn’t see it in the House. Didn’t see it in the Senate. Certainly didn’t see much of it at the so-called health care summit. The Dems called the Repubs the “Party of No.” The Repubs said that the Dems refused to even consider their alternative suggestions. Until I see more information from inside sources in both the House and the Senate, I have no reason to take Mr. Frum’s word for it that compromise was available to the Republicans but they failed to seize the chance. I saw nothing like that. If Mr, Frum did see that, then let him name those Senators who “would have liked to deal. But they were trapped.” So far, his allegations lack credible detail.
Morning, Wolverine. So how does Frum differ from a TPP other than he doesn’t have a don’t tread on me flag? Isn’t some of the beef the TP has with how the Republicans handled things in addition to the Democrats?
Did Frum invent that there was hold out? I am a huge believer in compromise and hammering things out. It doesn’t sound like that happened as it should from either party. And it does take at least 2 different sides willing to come to the compromise table.
This process has been going on for over a year. I refuse to see believe that it was all devils and angels. That just isn’t how things work. Maybe some day someone will write a book from the congressional record.
@Wolverine
David Horotwitz is the same guy trying to prove college professors are brainwashing kids in the classroom and persecuting conservative students. He wrote a book on the top 101 most “dangerous” professors. Check out this if you want to know more about him. I wouldn’t consider Horowitz an expert on anything. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/13/list
Moon, I prefer to look at Frum’s article from the eyes of an intelligence collector or an editor. My mission to is obtain reporting on the inner functioning of my principal targets with regard to the health care reform bill. In this case, the principal targets are the Republican minorities in the House and Senate. Specific interest: Whether compromise was or was not genuinely available to those minorities and , if available, why did they not opt for it?
Frum is my main reporting asset. (He is a commentator, not a reporter per se; but the tenor of his article makes you feel as if he is posing as a reporter.) Unfortunately for me, Frum is not a member of the inner circle of either of those targets. He has had some past access but he, in fact, is not a member of either organization in any official way. His job then becomes more difficult because he has to penetrate those targets from the position of an outsider and, in the process, come up with some solid, specific reporting from sub-sources within the targets. Frum does not have the option of providing just his views or speculation on this subject. He has to have identified sources and credible information collected from those sub-sources. He can, of course, provide his thoughts on the matter; but, until those thoughts are backed up by solid, inside information, they remain speculation by an outsider. Submitted without such detail, his report would be set aside by the analysts or an editor and not disseminated to the customers until information might become available from Frum or elsewhere which could back up the report.
The central theme of Frum’s article appears to revolve around the issue of compromise and his stated belief that the Republican minorities had compromise offered to them but rejected it for ulterior political motives, i.e. the November 2010 election. Frum alludes to certain Republican Senators who would have liked to have dealt with the Dems but were somehow forced by their colleagues or political circumstances not to do so, but he provides no hard facts to back up this statement. If Frum’s reporting is forwarded to customers (which it has been in this case — by himself alone), the customer would likely look at it with three personal responses: (1) No confirming detail or credible, specific sub-sourcing which could be followed up for confirmation; (2) at variance with other reporting in the same genre; and (3) does not jibe with what I saw while looking at events from my position.
In effect, Frum’s article, as it stands, remains speculation, in my opinion, and he has to be viewed on an equal level with those who have presented an opposite view, i.e. the editorial writer from the Wall Street Journal. Resume and reputation alone do not not validate specific reporting. Confirming detail from valid sub-sources does. That is my personal reaction to his article, and I believe that good intelligence and good journalism have many of the same strict reporting guidelines. Frum is not a reporter. He is a commentator whose current article did not have to go through several layers of strict editorial scrutiny. The best look I ever had at such editorial scrutiny was the way that Ben Bradlee of the WaPo dealt with Woodward and Bernstein during Watergate as described in “All the President’s Men.”.
I am not trying to be snarky and pedantic here. I am only trying to show how my own particular point of view on Frum’s article was developed. To tell the truth, I use the same criteria when assessing the credibility of statements made by any commentator on either side of the spectrum. That includes Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, and other conservatives as well as Maddow, Olbermann, Mathews, etc. There are only a few commentators who make it easier on me in that regard. One of them is John Bachelor (spelling?) because he is very good at bringing a variety of sub-sources right into the broadcast with him. When others do it, they often bring in people who qualify as “spokesmen” for one side or the other. You can practically guess which way they will go on an issue. Bachelor tends to get people who are less well known but obviously somewhere in or close to the actual trenches. I do not have to say: “John Bachelor said on his show that…” I get to say: “So-and-so was on the John Bachelor show and said….” But, what the hey, even then I keep looking for confirmation from elsewhere. That’s just me. A stubborn old goat who got burned a few times very early on in my life by this kind of stuff until I learned to pay attention.
My personal opinion on Frum? Another Washington “insider” who claims to be the fountain of truth. My personal reaction to this specific article: “Show me the money!!!” From my customer perspective, I did not see much of an effort on the Dem side to compromise. I saw, rather, someone determined to operate to the max ideologically out of a strong numerical majority position with the optimum backing of the White House. But, then, I myself do not know for sure what happened. I tend to side with the opinion of that WSJ editorial writer at this moment on the Dem strategy because I saw that precise thing happen with Republican Rep. Chou of New Orleans on the original House bill. I don’t remember Chou pontificating on how he loved that bill. But I did see a lot of dinero floating around out there, headed, it appears, toward the Big Easy .
Pinko, you found a little chink in the armor there with Horowitz. I should have been clearer in that post or added some kind of footnote. My intention was just to provide a couple of examples of opinion out there which is in opposition to Frum’s take on this matter. As for Horowitz himself, his standing has always been heavily dependent on the fact that he was once a fully accredited member of the Left. He switched sides. That, to me, is somewhat akin to being the CEO of a major corporation and being able to recruit for employment someone who was a player in the organization of your main competitor. He becomes a source with direct knowledge in that regard. That’s how, in my opinion, Horowitz has played his career. I’ve read quite a bit of his stuff, and my conclusion was that the “conversion” was genuine, not just opportunistic. But, then, I don’t know that for sure either because I have never met him and had an opportunity to probe. In the end, I still have to apply the personal criteria to his commentary which I described in the subsequent post. I tend to say “Show me the money!” quite a bit, as you may have noticed. Mrs. Wolverine always calls me “Doubting Thomas.”
Just so you aren’t peltless Doubting Thomas…..
And that is a fair assessment. I felt it was opinion rather than fact when I put up the article. I guess his opinion is just as good as the next guy’s. Having said that, I would have liked to have seen a compromise bill myself. I would have been more comfortable knowing both sides of the aisle had a hand in creating this legislation.
What I did see was a bunch of posturing about abortion. I am so sick of abortion controling everything American. I say posturing because the Hyde Amendment prevented abortion being an issue in the first place. The Hyde Amendment is pretty rock solid. The posturing and all consuming interest in abortion was pandering to the base and a waste of time.
Too bad Republican legislators chose to devote a disproportional amount of time and interest into something that was already handled. They really needed to be out there holding the democrats’ feet to the fire on the big issues. Democrats tend to get overly zealous and listen to the wrong people also, and that is exactly what I fear has happened.
Boy, Moon, you got in a good shot in the second para of #17. Bart Stupak became to me one of the biggest mysteries in this whole thing. I am still not absolutely sure what position he was playing on that political diamond. Even after watching him explain himself (video tape) to an audience of constituents in Cheboygan, Michigan, considerably before the final votes were taken, I felt like there was something critical there which I could not see. I now see that Waxman and Stupak have called upon AT&T, John Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon, et al to appear before Congress to explain why their accountants believe that the health care bill is going to cost all of them and their employees whopping sums of money. Maybe watching Stupak in action on this one might shed a little more light on his whole stance in this thing. My initial reaction was that a whole lot of conservatives and right-to-lifers got snookered somehow by placing a their bets on this guy.
One more personal opinion. Despite the Hyde Amendement, Stupak indicated that the real clincher for his “yea” vote was when Obama agreed to sign the executive order. IMHO, that was a real mislead in the whole deal. Stupak was looking for an easy out, which is why I don’t yet grasp his whole game plan. Executive orders mean nothing. They can come and they can go at the whim of the man in the Oval Office. George W. Bush issued an executive order banning fetal stem cell research. Obama scrubbed it early on in his administration. Sic transit executive orders.
BTW, Moon, my thanks also to Elena for suggesting this thread. To tell you the truth, when I go back to wearing my genealogist’s cap and exploring deep into the past, I tend to slack off on the news a bit, especially since TV has become much of a non-factor in our household. I’m finding that I often go here more and more in my web surfing moments in an effort to catch up. You all are becoming like a news source for me in many ways and a take-off point for further research. Keep it up, guys. Just the facts, ma’am. Don’t care whether they are pro or con.
I will pass it on. I have no idea why Stupak was the foil and who he really represented. The only thing Iknow about him is he had a son who committed suicide as a young adult. I looked him up and other being a Michigan congressman, that’s it. Never heard of him before.
Why can’t those DOW companies just send an email or their accountants down? I smell a rat somewhere but not sure where.
You know that I don’t trust either party…..
They should have gotten together at least in the Senate to hammer this out. Think we will ever know?
That whole right to life thing is a red herring. Hyde has been codified and recodied numerous times. It is so confusing that it was easy to fool the public, both the pro-choice side and the right to life side….about Hyde’s peril. Hyde wouldn’t be in peril from a nuclear attack. If it even had a loop hole, the right to lifers would have been all over it 20 years ago. There are a couple of exceptions that have been in place for a long time. Rape and incest of underage children or something like that…where pregnancy results. Not even sure but I think it is one of the most extreme of the ‘hard cases.’
You know, I really didn’t like the ‘War’ in Somalia. I sure wish I had gotten a line item veto on that war. I opposed it because of the practice of genital mutilation in that country. It is very widespread. I don’t think one American should be in harms way for people who accept that practice. No one gave a damn that my tax dollars went for something I considered immoral.
Moon, I’ve just gone through a brief history of the 1976 Hyde Amendment and the 2004 Hyde/Weldon Amendment which tried to strengthen it. The Supreme Court in 1980 essentially approved the right of the government to distinguish between abortion and other medical procedures. However, the prohibiiton has come to include exceptions for rape, incest, and dangerous health threats to a woman. Polls have shown that 70 % or so of the population has been generally in favor of the amendment. However, it also seems to me that the pro-choice groups and their allies in Congress long ago examined the SC decision in depth and decided that there may be ways to overcome the Hyde Amendment legislatively because of some of the broader statements in the SC decision.
The fact that many Democrats in the House were so admant that abortions be covered in the House health care reform bill suggests to me that they had convinced themselves that they had finally discovered a real vulnerability in the Hyde Amendment as further codified over the years. In essence, it looks to me like they thought the health care reform bill might be able to trump the Hyde Amendment. That could explain why other Democrats appeared to putting up a tough fight against that provision of the health bill. They might have decided themselves that the Hyde Amendment could possibly be bypassed. The Hyde Amendment was maybe not the barrier many thought it might be.
In looking back at Stupak’s role in this, I am now coming to believe that (1) he was always a supporter of the Democrat health care proposals up and down the line; (2) that he was not really some driven champion of the pro-life cause and was not intending originally to take on such a role in the national spotlight; and (3) the key to his actions may lay on a smaller playing field — his own district in Northern Michigan.
In looking back again at some of Stupak’s statements, it now seems clear to me that he was a firm supporter of the Democratic health reforms all along. But I also think he may have detected a constituent problem involving re-election. He probably had a certain overall part of his constituency which was strongly opposed to the bill in general terms. By voting for the bill, he would risk losing their votes. Could he have also identified within that constituency a sort of sub-constituency that was lasered in almost exclusively on the abortion issue vice the whole bill? If he could be seen to be championing their cause, they might just heave a sigh of relief and forget about everything else. That would give him a chance to siphon off that part of the anti-bill constituency and possibly win re-election through it. But how to do that? Could he state truthfully that he was a supporter of the bill and then say “Don’t worry! The Hyde Amendment will preclude spending federal funds on abortion.” That would have caused a guy like me to get up and ask him why the House Democrats were so insistent on abortion funding if the Hyde Amendment prevented just that. In my opinion, Stupak would have had a tough time working around that one to my satisfaction.
So, Stupak puts on a big show in Washington, leading the charge against abortion funding. Now the pressure on him from Pelosi et al gets really heavy to vote for a bill he essentially supports. But, at this late date, he cannot get up and simply assure his targeted constituents that the Hyde Amendment serves their cause. That would raise the question of why he had put on this big show of opposition to abortion funding all this time. Why didn’t he just explain it before? Was he not confident about the Hyde Amendment before? What has changed in that regard? So, where is the easy out for Stupak— the way to suddenly assure those constituents that he has succeeded in stopping the abortion funding? Enter Obama’s offer to sign an executive order. Problem solved. Stupak can vote for the bill he supported all along and claim a victory on the abortion issue. He doesn’t even have to address that pesky Hyde Amendment thing.
These, of course, are just my own musings when I put on the old “conspiracy” hat. But more and more I am beginning to think that Stupak was putting on a sham aimed specifically at a part of his own Michigan constituency. The funny thing is that a whole lot of right-to-lifers and even opponents of the bill in wider terms all around the country glombed onto Stupak’s sham and were preparing to treat him as a national hero. Then the show stopped. Some may still believe in the miracle of that executive order. But I personally don’t see a long life for it once NARAL and PP and others start putting serious pressure on their favorite President. We might eventually have to go back to debating the Hyde Amendment.
As I said, these are just some suppositions on my part. I would welcome some alternate views on this exercise in political gamesmanship. The more in this “conspiracy club”, the more fun we have.
I certainly don’t think he is a national hero. I am a non comspiracy person by nature…Probably a whole lots gets by me that shouldn’t.
As a pro choice woman, I wouldn’t have cared either way. I can’t see a whole health care plan being held up on abortion. I am simply tired of every single thing we do as a nation getting quagmired over abortion. It’s just one of those things I don’t think is anyone else’s business.
While the entire Congress is dithering over abortion instead of sititng down and hammering out the basics that will affect all of us, abortion is the damn battle flag again.
As for the Hyde Amendment, I believe it would have to be overturned, repealed or amended. Fat chance of that happening. I don’t think it can be superceded. Good for you for doing all that reading. I am mired in the Discovery Channel Life. I am tired of watching animals devour each other. I could do with a little less ‘natural’ nature.
David Frum is correct in pointing out that the health care legislation is very much like Mitt Romney’s, the former governor of Massachesetts. Romney was very nearly the Republican nominee for President.
David Frum is correct in pointing out that the health care bill was a big win for the conservative entertainment industry.
David Frum is correct in pointing out that even if Republicans win back their congressional majorities this year, that is hardly a reward. The health care bill is the law of the land and is here to stay.
Good exchange Wolverine/Moon — thanks. My own sense is that we should not underestimate the pressure that Stupak was under to conform to the party’s agenda. Obamacare is less about health care than it is special interest legislation. If it had been about health care there was a long list of alternative approaches that would have generated bi-partisan support. As the old line goes – follow the money. Here it follow the interest groups and voter registries.
As to abortion being the battle flag – I agree that it is. I am limited pro-choice on this, but more from a libertarian perspective. I view the Hyde Amedment as a line in the sand that recognizes the views of a large part of our population (compromise) and one that sets some some limits of decency. The problem and the reason I think that abportion is such a bell-weather is that that line is moving with technology and it makes folks nervous about what can, should and should not be done. What was not viable in 1970 is today.
It might have helped had the Republicans actually offered an alternative.
Found an interesting political column in the Detroit Free Press. The opinion was that Stupak was getting his arm twisted especially hard on the health care reform bill by Rep. John Dingell (D-Dearborn, MI), the so-called Dean of the House of Representatives and one of the most liberal guys in the place. It appears that Dingell has long been known in those parts as Stupak’s “mentor.” Woof! That arm twisting must of hurt something fierce. Obama to the rescue with a therapeutic executive order!