Conservatives and the Public Option
Watching the President's masterful speech last night, it finally dawned on me why conservatives are so exorcised about the public option. Obama (rightly) stressed that, even at its most expansive, a public option would add choice only for those who don't already get insurance through existing means. I KNEW this, of course, and I think many proponents of the PO have always made that clear. But conservatives see it differently. When conservatives hear the arguments for the PO, they hear "pro-government liberals creating a government program because they love government." And I think it is true that some PO supporters do come across that way. The point of being conservative is trying everything you can before you have government do it directly. I would argure that we've had almost 70 years of that with private insurers and that's enough. But you can make a valid argument that you should try actually tightly regulating private insurance offerings FIRST before you infringe on that territory. I think the President did a great thing last night by addressing this argument explicitly in his closing remarks, and by saying he would never stop fighting to give the American people a real choice of quality health plans, public or private. If the Dems are smart, they will hitch their wagons to that and never let go. And they sould stop salivating about a new government program. That's dog whistle for the conservatives.
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I disagree slightly over a nuance.
Part of the reason republicans (including the conservatives) don't like the public option is because our history is full of examples where the direct government into something was promised to be small, carefully contained and controlled and very rapidly ended up being the opposite of that.
My prediction is that if the Democrats manage to pass the public option we will see several things within a decade: (a) it will become a huge entitlement like other programs before it, (b) it will never be reduced only expanded, and (c) conservatives (not all republicans) will defend it.
The difference between democrats and conservatives is time elapsed, not ideology.
September 10, 2009 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have to disagree with both you and Lalo about Republican ideology vs. lip service vs. reality. Words are meaningless when it comes to politicians.
The Iraq Adventure, for just one of many Bush-era examples, enabled a no-bid contractor bonanza. Who do you think pays for those contracts? The government does.
In reality, many Republican politicians are not for "smaller," "contained" government at all. That's propaganda.
In reality, Republican politicians love REALLY BIG government. They especially love dismantling legitimate social programs at the expense of the poor and disadvantaged, and then hiding their REALLY BIG government programs under false names like "privatization." But somehow American tax payers always end up funding Republican "programs."
To stay focused, I'm not saying the Dems are innocent lambs. They too are wolves.
I'm simply not going to accept the use of propagandistic memes as the starting point for this discussion. Lalo further muddies the waters by pointing out the flaws on the Democratic side without acknowledging the Republican bullshit.
To break it down still further: Citizens adopt the propagandistic talking points of each party's politicians. Citizens may well believe the propaganda being fed to them.
The actual government programs, however, were designed by the politicians, not the citizens.
There is a disconnect between ideology and reality when we have these conversations with each other. I think we need to stop doing that.
September 10, 2009 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems that we agree more than we disagree. I use "republicans" or "democrats" as umbrella terms for coalitions that include various ideologies.
Just as examples, Republicans include social conservatives, economic liberals, "moderates", a few libertarians and a small handful of classic liberals in the mold of the New England republicans from the 1930-60s.
That's the reason I made the distinction between republicans and conservatives in my comment.
September 10, 2009 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, L, and I believe you're right that we agree more than we disagree. I was just resetting the table is all. ;-)
September 10, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink