David Frum: Health Care Bill Passage is Waterloo for Republicans and Conservatives.

David Frum is a right wing commentator who invented the famous Axis of Evil phrase used by Bush. This post chastises Republicans and Conservatives for failing to attempt to take a bipartisan stand and attempt to modify the Obama Health Care Reform Bill. He believes that the passage of the bill was a historic defeat for Conservatives and Republicans. Republicans will be unable to rescind the bill.

Interestingly Frum thinks that the Obama Bill was close to that of the right wing Heritage Foundation Bill and could form the basis for a bipartisan bill that would have been much more to to the right than what actually was passed. No doubt Conservatives will be frothing at the mouth about Frum's remarks about right wing talk show hosts!


Waterloo
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

GOP sees Rev. Wright as pathway to victory

A recent poll shows that McCain would beat Obama (and also Hilary). Apparently many Republicans are changing their view that Obama would be harder to beat than Hilary. Wright has provided the Republicans with some great video clips to clip Obama's wings. I just wonder if the market managers within the Democratic party may decide that Obama is damaged goods and Obama's financial gusher will begin to produce less each day. Hilary is always there to be thrust forward as the old reliable who is not tainted through covorting with America haters just good old Bill who can be forgiven for liking oral sex.
Most people I have talked to think that Obama's speech on race was one of the best pieces of oratory in recent U.S. history but excellent rhetoric may have less effect than crude videos of Wright on the U.S. public.



GOP sees Rev. Wright as pathway to victory
By: Jonathan Martin
March 19, 2008 06:04 AM EST

For months, Republican party officials have watched with increasing
trepidation as Barack Obama has shattered fundraising records, packed
arena after arena with shrieking fans and pulled in significant
Republican and independent votes.

Now, with the emergence of the notorious video portraying Rev.
Jeremiah Wright damning the country, criticizing Israel, faulting
U.S. policy for the attacks of Sept. 11 and generally lashing out
against white America, GOP strategists believe they've finally found
an antidote to Obamamania.

In their view, the inflammatory sermons by Obama's pastor offer the
party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic
nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the
party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a
powerful motivating force for the conservative base.

In fact, the video trove has convinced some that, after months of
praying for Hillary Clinton and the automatic enmity which she
arouses, that they may actually have easier prey.

"For the first time, some Republicans are rethinking Hillary as their
first choice," said Alex Castellanos, a veteran media consultant who
recently worked for Mitt Romney's campaign.

Even Obama's much-lauded Tuesday speech, which detailed his
relationship with his church and focused on the issue of racial
reconciliation, failed to shake the notion that Republicans had been
given a rare political gift.

"It was a speech written to mau-mau the New York Times editorial
board, the network production people and the media into submission.
Beautifully calibrated but deeply dishonest," said GOP media
consultant Rick Wilson, who crafted the ad in 2002 tying then-Sen.
Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden. "Not good enough."

Until now, questions about Obama's allegiance to country had been
largely confined to the fever swamps of the Internet and e-mail
chains. They took the form of dark whispers about the greater meaning
of Obama's failure to put his hand over his heart during one national
anthem, his decision not to wear an American flag lapel pin and, at
their most toxic, the outright lie that he's a Muslim or some sort of
Manchurian candidate.

With Michelle Obama's comments last month that she was, thanks to her
husband's candidacy, for the first time "really proud of [her
country]," the topic entered the more mainstream elements of the
conservative conversation, ricocheting across talk radio, cable news
and blogs.

"All the sudden you've got two dots and two dots make a line," said
Castellanos. "You start getting some sense of who he is and it's not
the Obama you thought – he's not the Tiger Woods of politics."

But if Michelle Obama's gaffe caused some ripples in the right-wing
pond, the Wright videos have detonated the equivalent of a daisy
cutter on the conservative landscape, awakening an otherwise
dispirited party base.

"I usually get three or four emails a week on Obama," said Michigan
Republican chairman Saul Anuzis Monday. "Today I received more than
10 – all of them on his minister."

Among the e-mails Anuzis received was a link to a mash-up video
splicing together Wright's most extreme comments, Michelle Obama's
statement, footage of Obama not putting his hand over his heart
during the anthem at a political event and images of Malcolm X and
the two black Olympians in 1968 who raised their fists in the "black
power" salute set to the iconic rap song by Public Enemy "Fight the
Power."

The video, titled "Is Obama Wright," is described as being produced
by something called "NHaleMedia," apparently just a dummy Web site
set up to produce anonymous and home-made videos.

In effect, the pastor has done what many on the right, quivering even
with the anonymity afforded by the online era, had hesitated over
until now—thrust highly delicate matters of patriotism and race into

the political dialogue.

"It opens up an entire new vein," said Republican consultant Paul
Wilson.

Just as with John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in
2004, Republican strategists view the Wright flap as deeply damaging
to Obama because it strikes at the message, or set of principles, at
the heart of his candidacy.

In Obama's case, the core of his appeal has been that he transcends
race and is more inclined toward conciliation than combat.

"He wants the authentic black image but he also wants to keep all his
safe, suburban Obamacans in line," said Rick Wilson. "Well, you can't
have both – they're mutually exclusive."

"This is a guy who associates with some real haters," he added.

Perhaps most damaging for Obama, his opponents now have the powerful
video to make that case.

"It's harder for people to say it's taken out of context because
these are Wright's own words," noted Chris LaCivita, the Republican
strategist who helped craft the Swift Boat commercials against Kerry
that employed the use of their target's own language when he returned
from Vietnam and returned his medals. "You let people draw their own
conclusions."

"You don't have to say that he's unpatriotic, you don't question his
patriotism," he added. "Because I guaran-damn-tee you that with that
footage you don't have to say it."

Asked if they would say it or even suggest it, a spokesman for John
McCain indicated that the GOP candidate would not.

"There are profound differences on enormously important issues that
will affect the future of the country," said McCain adviser Steve
Schmidt. "He's said he intends to campaign on those issues."

McCain's hesitance to go anywhere near the Wright videos speaks to
just how explosive they could be among voters – but also to his
awareness of the potential for a backlash.

"He needs to stay away from it," said Paul Wilson of McCain. "It's
poison."

But thanks to the power of new media forces – talk radio, cable TV
and blogs – to drive a storyline, McCain's job could easily be done
for him.

"The best thing the GOP can do is stay out of it," suggested Jim
Dyke, a former RNC communications chief who was a key figure in the
behind-the-scenes takedown of Kerry in '04. "Why risk getting shot by
running into the middle of a circular firing squad?"

And to interfere may obscure the attack, added Castellanos. "Leave it
alone – the last thing you want is to make it a partisan Republican
attack. It's much more credible on its own."

Yet some conservatives aren't content to let the video played out
organically, spread via "did-you-see-this?" e-mails—especially if
it's revealed that Obama was in fact in the church when Wright
delivered some of his more incendiary remarks. The temptation to
craft an ad may be overwhelming.

"Obama knows that if somebody puts him in church on some day that
Wright said some crazy [stuff] like white people injected blacks with
AIDS he's in a world of hurt," said Rick Wilson. "I would eat this up
like cake."