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Don’t Be a Flake, Mitt
Mitt Romney burst into his role as the junior senator from Utah with an op-ed criticizing Donald Trump’s character, or lack thereof. Though the piece was treated as a bombshell, it was the usual mild-mannered, more-in-sadness-than-in-anger critique that Romney specializes in.
Taking on the president of his own party as his first act drew strong reactions from most elected Republicans and every conservative pundit. I suppose I should throw in my two cents. Although I agree with Romney’s criticism, the op-ed was the kind of unforced error that ended my former senator’s political career.
Like Romney, Jeff Flake is an eminently decent man more concerned with policy minutiae than party loyalty. But the only times he was roused to comment on the rough-and-tumble of partisan politics, his targets were on the right.
Every good politician should ding his own party when they mess up, but they need to accept that the other party is much, much worse. Flake never unleashed on Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi; he saved his ineffectual wrath for members of his own party.
Perhaps Mitt is setting himself up as the anti-Trump, opening a lane to the GOP nomination in 2020 if Trump goes south. But if he wants Republican voters to support him, he better spend a lot more time focusing on the real target.
Romney should keep a tally in his day planner: Every criticism of Trump merits at least 25 criticisms of the braying donkeys trying to push socialism on America. If he’s unwilling to take the fight to the left, there’s no reason for anyone on the right to support him.
Published in General
I can’t find anything to argue about here, and I really like to argue.
Yes I can.
They passed repeal after repeal when they knew it did not matter, and did nothing when it did.
More, the supposed policy gurus, the wizards of legislative maneuvering, did not want to hold the hearings and actually construct real legislation in 2015 or 2016, giving the voters a clear, real choice. That real bill should have been sent to President Obama’s desk no later than the spring of 2016, then brought back to President Trump’s desk on his very first day in office. What we got was Failure Theater.
Real legislation? Like what? Have you got a way to provide health care to millions of people at no cost? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Obama followed the socialist playbook, and it worked. Even if the socialists’ program is awful (and Obamacare is awful), once it’s out there people become dependent on it and are adamant about not giving it up. And the other voters don’t want to see themselves as meanies who stole health care away from people who needed it. That was the Obama/socialist plan all along, and it worked. The Republicans caved when they went from “repeal” to “repeal and replace.” And Trump was totally on board with that. He was promising to repeal and replace Obamacare, in such a way that no one would lose their health care. That is simply impossible. Unless you “replace” Obamacare with more Obamacare. So you can blame Congress, and other people can blame Trump, but I blame reality.
The battle now is to prevent single payer. Which would be even worse than Obamacare. Much worse, in fact. The Democrats get it. They are becoming gung ho behind “Medicare for Everyone.” Meanwhile, Republicans are still busy hurling around recriminations for not repealing Obamacare. Wrong, wrong, wrong. To paraphrase Rumsfeld, “you go to war fighting the battle that is in front of you, not the battle you wish you could fight.”
Well, to start with, that’s not the government’s job. If we believe in free-market solutions, then step one would be to get the government out of the health insurance business altogether, including regulating what insurance companies must include on their policies.
I dunno, the uninsured were already getting the health care they needed prior to Obamacare — mostly in the Emergency Rooms of hospitals, but still. It bugs me that the neo-Marxists succeed by changing the meaning of language so often (health care =/= health insurance). You’d listen to Europeans’ impressions of America’s pre-Obamacare health system and you’d think we had corpses lining the streets. Meanwhile, they’ve got ambulances circling the hospitals waiting for a spot to open up in their ERs. You can have cheap, easily accessible, or high quality health care — pick two.
No, they weren’t. Not all health care can be done in an emergency room.
But, there are services available outside emergency rooms. That people don’t know how to access them is a problem, and probably not one we can solve. There is no perfection in this world.
My brother-in-law was in a large radiology group doing breast care for many years. You know who sued them most often? The people who couldn’t pay. It was typical for them receive less than 60% on the dollar of their billed services. Another brother-in-law was an orthopedic surgeon who made it a point to care for farmers no matter their financial situation. My previous primary care doc was part of a church group that provided free clinic services on weekends. People can get healthcare in this country. Always could. It’s a matter of figuring out how.
As long as government is involved, the market is distorted. Healthcare and Education are the only areas where spending power of the consumer has declined in the past 50 years. Both are the fault of increasing government.
@drewinwisconsin, @westernchauvinist & @bryangstephens, each of you responded to my comment by presenting arguments for why government should get out of the health care / health insurance business entirely, which of course would include getting rid of Obamacare. I mostly agree with your arguments. And nobody even mentioned what is arguably the worst distortion of the health care market – caused by tax policy that essentially forces people to get their health care through employer provided insurance programs, or pay vastly more for it.
Your arguments would also support eliminating Medicare. But that’s just not going to happen. Not now. Medicare is just too embedded. It is politically impossible to get rid of it. And my point here is that this has happened with Obamacare as well. You tell me that the country would be better off without Obamacare – you’re preaching to the choir. But it is politically impossible to do that, unless you also provide a “replacement” for Obamacare that covers all the same people (and probably additional people as well). The Republicans recognized this as far back as 2012, which is why they stopped running on “repeal” and started running on “repeal and replace.” The voters simply have no stomach for pure repeal. Your arguments fall on deaf ears – not my ears, but the voters’ ears. And I am suggesting that it is counter-productive to attack members of your own party for failing to do something that political circumstances make impossible to do.
They ran on it, saying “Once we have the Senate we will do it” Then they said, “Once we have the White House we will do it.” McCain ran on it.
They lied. They never had any intention of doing anything. They had the power, they could have done it, but did not.
I think any plan has to unwind, over time, the government in healthcare. They had time to set that up. They had time to get plans ready from some think tank. They had 7 years to draft something better, and force it through in reconciliation. The reality it, they did not want too. Period. End of Story.
The GOP is the party of Big Government too, because they like it that way.
But, hey, blame the voters. They people always being lied to by everyone. The people no one will have a real conversation with.
They didn’t run on “it.” Until Obamacare actually started covering people, Republicans ran on “repeal.” Once Obamacare kicked in, Republicans ran on “repeal and replace.” Contrary to your statement, McCain didn’t run on “it.” Of course he didn’t, because there was no Obamacare to repeal when McCain ran in 2008. But Romney ran on repeal and replace, and so did all the Republicans who took the Senate. And so did Trump. You’re just rewriting history here. They didn’t “replace” because there is no replacement. It can’t be done. You tell me how to cover all those people who can’t or won’t pay for their own health insurance without the government paying for it, and I will get behind you 100%. But you can’t, and neither could the Congressional Republicans. And neither could Trump.
I’m going to give up now because I have made this point as clearly as I can, and you’re just not hearing me. You want a scapegoat because you didn’t get your way. Well, I didn’t get my way either, but I’m not going to blame anyone but the voters and the Democrats.
Ah, the “You are being childish” argument. Good one.
Well, we are mostly in agreement, but if it was impossible to repeal and replace, they shouldn’t have promised it.
Dennis Prager says people (politicians) are most afraid of the Left in this country, and that government benefits are more addictive than heroin. We have to figure out a way to fight this or we’re going down. Making false promises doesn’t cut it.
The left makes false promises too. A lot of them. They have been promising “free” universal health care since the Roosevelt Administration, and they still are. Among their other current false promises are free college tuition and 100% renewable energy replacing fossil fuels. And that it will all be paid for by taxes on the 1%. These promises are obviously and patently impossible to deliver. But their voters buy into false promises as readily as ours do. Politicians of every stripe make false promises because that’s what gets them elected. I don’t like it, but we ought to recognize that it’s true.
If it weren’t for false promises, the Left wouldn’t make any promises at all!
The left delivers on its promise to move the nation leftward. They are within shot of universal healthcare now.
And that is the last promise left, from their hundred year project. Everything else is already in place.
I dunno. This assumes the Left is ever satisfied. I don’t think that’s possible.
Shelley described the scene when that happens: