Raw Story:Democratic Party strategist James Carville offered up a new strategy for Democrats to follow in their battle to reform health care: Let the GOP defeat it, then defeat the GOP at the ballot box.
At a roundtable discussion with Republican consultant Mary Matalin and host John King on CNN's State of the Union, Carville argued that if the Democrats can come up with an agreement that is supported by most Democratic members of Congress, they should let the GOP filibuster it, thereby killing health care reform and effectively painting the Republicans as being the party that opposed fixing the system.
"What about this?," Carville said. "Suppose they pass a House bill that can get 56 Senate Democrats... And make [Republicans] filibuster it. But the old kinda way is that they filibuster it and make’em go three weeks and all night and [Democrats] will be there the whole time.
"Then, you say, 'They’re the people that stopped it. We had a majority of Democrats. We had a good bill. They stopped it.'"
That's a great idea -- except for all the obvious stuff that's wrong with it. For one, look at where we are now. It sucks enough as it is and it's eating up the president's political capital at an alarming rate. And you're saying we should just scrap everything and do it all over after the elections? Yeah, that's going to be real appealing to lawmakers who've got angry mobs outside their windows...
And for another, the term "health care crisis" isn't hyperbolic. "Studies estimate that the number of excess deaths among uninsured adults age 25-64 is in the range of 22,000 a year," according to the National Coalition on Health Care. "This mortality figure is more than the number of deaths from diabetes (17,500) within the same age group." 2011 is way too long to wait.
I can understand the frustration here, but playing politics with health care would just be too consequential. Besides, the GOP has that market cornered -- we really can't compete with them in the arena of bad ideas. Let's stick to the plan titled "Do Something."
2 comments:
What gets me is why they're still fighting. The Republicans did nothing in a bi-partisan way. When they had the majority and they wanted something passed they just pushed it through. And we should be doing the same.
Carville advocates a passive-aggressive stance on reform. Bad idea, for all the reasons you note. From his perspective, though, it looks like he's trying to make up a plausible alibi for failure. Not a good sign at all.
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