What Republicians should do next by Karl Rove:
Democrats are celebrating victory. The public outcry against what they've done doesn't seem to bother them. They take it as validation that they are succeeding at transforming America.
But we've seen this movie before and it won't end happily for Democrats. Their morale rose when the stimulus passed in February 2009. The press hailed it as a popular answer to joblessness and a sluggish economy. At the time, Democrats thought it brightened their chances in the 2009 gubernatorial elections.
But a flawed bill, bumbling implementation, and unfulfilled expectations turned the stimulus into a big drag on Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey. A CBS News/New York Times poll recently reported that only 6% of Americans believe the stimulus package created jobs.
Democratic hopes that passing health-care reform will help them politically will be unfulfilled because ObamaCare only benefits a small number of people in the short run. Until the massive subsidies to insurance companies fully ramp up in 2017, this bill will be more pain than gain for most Americans.
For example, changes in insurance regulations in 2011 and two new mandates in 2014 that force everyone to buy insurance and require everyone to be charged a similar price regardless of age or health will cause insurance premiums to rise more than they would have otherwise. The 10 million people who have a health savings account will also be hurt starting in 2011. With each passing year after that, they will be able to put less away tax free for medical expenses.
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Associated Press
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ObamaCare cuts $1.8 billion in support for Medicare Advantage this October, another $5.8 billion in October 2011, and an additional $9.2 billion right before the 2012 presidential election. This will increase premiums and reduce benefits for the 4.5 million people in the program.
Drug companies will start raising prices to pay billions in new taxes they will have to pay starting next year. New taxes on medical devices and insurance companies will show up in higher prices and premiums before long.
Polls may show a temporary increase in the president's popularity, but underlying public opinion about this law is not likely to change just because the president hits the trail to sell it. After all, he made 58 speeches before the measure passed, including two in prime time.
About Karl Rove
Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy-making process.
Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.
Karl writes a weekly op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).
Email the author atKarl@Rove.comor visit him on the web atRove.com. Or, you can send a Tweet to @karlrove.
Before that string of speeches the public was in favor of the concept of health-care reform by a ratio of 2 to 1. Afterward, about 60% of the public was opposed to the president's plan. Those who strongly opposed outnumbered those strongly in favor by 2 to 1 or better in most polls.
Tens of millions of ordinary people watched the deliberations, studied the proposals, and made up their minds. Their concerns about spending, deficits and growing government power are not going away.
Nor is their opposition to ObamaCare. According to a new CNN poll, majorities of Americans believe that they will pay more for medical care, the federal deficit will increase, and that government will be too involved in health care under the president's plan.
Democrats claim they've rallied their left-wing base. But that base isn't big enough to carry the fall elections, particularly after the party alienated independents and seniors. The only way Democrats win a base election this year will be if opponents of this law stay home.
To keep that from happening, Republican candidates must focus on ObamaCare's weaknesses. It will cost $2.6 trillion in its first decade of operation and is built on Madoff-style financing. For example, it double counts Social Security payroll taxes, long-term care premiums, and Medicare savings in order to make it appear more fiscally responsible. In reality, ObamaCare isn't $143 billion in the black, as Democrats have claimed, but $618 billion in the red. And giving the IRS $10 billion to hire about 16,000 agents to enforce the new taxes and fees in ObamaCare will drive small business owners crazy.
Republicans have a powerful rallying cry in "repeal, replace and reform." Few voters will want to keep onerous mandates that hit individuals and taxes that hobble economic growth. Rather than spending a trillion dollars on subsidies for insurance companies and Medicaid expansion, as ObamaCare does, Republicans should push for giving individuals the same health-insurance tax break businesses get, which would cost less.
Republicans must also continue to press for curbing junk lawsuits, enabling people to buy insurance across state lines, increasing the amount of money they can sock away tax free for medical expenses, and permitting small businesses to pool risk.
Opponents of ObamaCare have decisively won the battle for public opinion. As voters start to feel the pain of this new program, Republicans will be in a stronger position if they stay in the fight, make a principled case, and lay out a competing vision.
Repeal the Democrats by Daniel Henninger
WSJ
I thought y'all should take a look at what they're saying to each other. Let's not pretend they don't have a solid base of support either. I also rather strongly suggest we do not waste time reviling that support. It is what it is our screaming about is rather worthless in the end.All day Sunday and into the night, Republican House Members tilted at the Democratic Party's mammoth health-care windmill. Amid the Stupaks and Neugebauers, Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan finally told the chamber the truth. This debate wasn't just about doctors and insurance, he said. "This is ultimately about what kind of country we are going to be in the 21st century."
Signing the bill into law Tuesday Mr. Obama also stepped away from his windmill to say something real: "Today we are affirming . . . a truth every generation is called to rediscover for itself, that we are not a nation that scales back its aspirations."
ndisputably correct. The U.S. has produced generations of upward strivers and competitors. Since 1950 til now, 82 of 150 Nobel laureates in medicine have been from the U.S. With enactment of this law, the U.S. will throttle down. Rather than spend our energies this century competing straight up with rising Asia for economic primacy, we'll work to pay for the fat but happy social-welfare state of the last century.
Or maybe not.
Spring renewal and baseball's new season are upon us, so let's quote the optimism of Yogi: It isn't over until it's over. I thought 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday night in Washington was the Republican Party's finest hour in a long time. When the voting stopped, the screen said the number of Republicans voting for Mr. Obama's bill was zero. Not one. Nobody.
Pristine opposition is being spun as a Republican liability. It looks to me like a Republican resurrection. The party hasn't yet discovered what it should be, but this clearly was a party discovering what it cannot be.
Put it this way: If you produce a bill that Olympia Snowe of Maine cannot vote for, you have not produced legislation "for the generations." You have not even produced legislation that is liberal. You have produced legislation from the left. You have produced once-in-a-lifetime legislation that no Republican from any constituency across America could vote for.
Finally, we are achieving real political definition.
The Democrats are now the party of the state. The 20th century hybrid version of the Democratic Party, which included private-sector industrial unions and Wall Street liberals, is being abandoned by its leadership as unwanted and increasingly unnecessary.
Richard Trumka, the former head of the mine workers' union who now runs the AFL-CIO, had to get an 11th hour White-House reprieve from his own party's desire to get financing for their legislation by taxing many of his largely private-sector union members' Rolls-Royce insurance plans. Time was, the party existed to protect those private unions; now it's optional.
To make up for not being able to expropriate health-care cash until 2018 from the remnants of the old industrial unions, the Democrats conjured a 3.8% "Medicare tax" on higher-bracket investment income. Democrats and Mr. Obama defended the investment taxes as "fair-share" social justice. Much of Wall Street has been notable for its private philanthropy across an array of liberal and cultural causes, but now "giving back" means a pipeline hooked straight into the federal budget. Congressional staff will decide who gets what.
Liberals in the private sector have to come to grips with the fact that what they do for a living is an abstraction to the people they are sending to Washington. Nobody at the top of the party is much interested in them anymore. House and Senate Democrats hammered insurance, pharma and medical-device makers with taxes and intimidation. It wasn't just politics. It was belief. With this bill, the party made the transition from market unionism to Alinskyism, from a politics tempered by the marketplace to one that milks the marketplace.
By default more than design, the Republicans now find themselves the party of the private economy. Their members, even in faraway Maine, should figure out how to align themselves with the interests of what is still the world's most dynamic economy.
The GOP is being counseled to abandon its morning-after impulse to "repeal the bill." Why do that? This is the first honest emotion the party has had in years. Yes, technical repeal isn't remotely possible until after 2012. But "Repeal!" is a terrific bumper sticker and campaign slogan for our times. Repeal! ObamaCare is just a start. Can't repeal the bill yet? Drive people to November's polls to repeal the Democratic Party and what it has turned into.
On Monday morning, the Service Employees International's Andy Stern, a big winner, said, "This is not a bad debate to have." He's right, and on Sunday the Republican Party found its footing to have that debate. It lost a battle, but with its total rejection of this huge entitlement, it also lost its spendthrift reputation. Now its members need to think hard about an answer for their own good question, What kind of country do we want?
Instead I will focus on that last question "What kind of country do we want?"
It's an important one. For myself I want a strong competitive nation. I also want one where my fellow Americans can actually live, not simply exist. And our healthcare system is simply no longer competitive. Nor does it encourage us to do much but toil away at jobs with shrinking wages to pay growing costs. I do not believe we need to trade in economic or military strength to change that.
I want a nation freed of the rot that has steadily crept in on every level and I call on us to use whatever tool is necessary to do that.
