Tar Heel Dispatch - Pulling the plug on healthcare

It was a disappointing anniversary for the President. One year after his coronation on the steps of the Capitol, the President’s most coveted legislative initiative, healthcare, is now on life support with the unprecedented victory of Republican Scott Brown in the run-off election for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s vacant see in Massachusetts.

Scott Brown ran a simple, straightforward campaign on basic conservative principles in the bluest of blue Democratic states. He promised lower taxes, a hard line on fighting terrorists, and opposition to the President’s healthcare bill.

Brown as a couple of memorable lines in his stump speeches including, “I’ll be the 41st vote against healthcare,” and, “our tax dollars should go to the weapons to fight terrorists, not lawyers to defend them.” Down in the polls by 30 points in September, Brown had climbed to a comfortable 5 point lead with mere days before the election.

Pundits debated whether President Obama would swoop in to campaign for the Democrat candidate, Martha Coakley.

Some reasoned that the President wouldn’t use up valuable political capital by backing a losing candidate.

After all, the President’s track record in swaying local elections in Virginia and New Jersey, where Republicans won gubernatorial races last fall, proved dismal.

I remarked to friends at the time that Obama would definitely stump for Martha Coakley, because he had no choice.

A Brown win would mean the death of Obama’s healthcare bill because flipping Ted Kennedy’s former seat to the Republican column would reduce the Democrat majority to 59 members, one vote short of the 60 required to overcome a Republican filibuster against the healthcare bill.

Brown won. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow looked like they were at a funeral on the set of MSNBC.

It reminded me of the day my political science professor came to class dressed in all black, with tears in her eyes and announced that John Kerry had conceded to President Bush.

In Massachusetts, Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans nearly 4 to 1. Independents make up slightly over 50 percent of the voters.

How could it be that a Republican, running on bedrock conservative principles, had managed to win in this environment?

Brown was certainly buoyed by support from the nascent Tea Party movement. A new poll shows that the Tea Party, even though it’s not a real political party, is more popular than the Republican Party. Independents strongly favor the “Tea Party” over both Democrats and Republicans.

Though Brown did not actively identify himself with the Tea Party movement, he most definitely championed its causes.

Not only this, but Independents voted for Brown in droves. Even people who voted for Obama decided to vote for Brown.

The conventional wisdom has always been that moderates hate partisanship.

They don’t like controversial figures. Moderates want, for lack of a better word, moderation.

A conservative Republican couldn’t win in a blue state. Republicans had to be sensible, not ideological, if they wanted to win.

But Brown’s win validates my longstanding view that Republicans win when they act like conservatives. Republicans stand to gain nothing by acting like Democrats-lite.

The rise of the Tea Party’s popularity indicates that the GOP’s hope lies in ideological purity, not moderation.

Moderate Republicans are nothing more than Republicans-in-name-only who vote with the Democrats when it really matters.

Even the Blue Dog Democrats, whose rise in 2006 gave the Democrats majorities in Congress, knew that America is a center-right country.

In a hypothetical election between a Democrat and moderate Republican, what choice does the average voter have? Why vote for the amateur Republican tax-and-spender when you can vote for the professional?

Acting like a conservative sets Republican’s apart from their opponents and offers the voter a distinct choice. If choice is “partisanship” then so be it.

Democrats now are scratching their heads, wondering whether and how to move forward with healthcare.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she doesn’t have the votes to pass what the Senate has already passed and the Senate doesn’t have the 60 votes it needs to pass a new bill.

My prediction is that the Democrats will try to pass small individual elements of their thousand page healthcare bill.

They may even adopt some Republican ideas such as malpractice reform and interstate portability of insurance plans.

But already, Obama is miscalculating thinking he can hijack the “populist” uproar in the country by trying to bash Wall Street, and punish banks with new taxes.

It’s classic smoke and mirrors. But I think people will see through this veiled demagoguery.

Obama now governs from a position of weakness. He is powerless to punish his political foes or help his political friends.

Democrats know that support of healthcare is the touch of political death, even in a place as safe as Massachusetts.

Now as Democrats are starting to jump ship from the President’s agenda (a few actually supporting an extension of the expiring Bush tax cuts), the question is whether Obama will go down with the ship or move to the center.



Tar Heel Dispatch is written by Tyler Younts, a second-year law student at Campbell University. Younts, who grew up in Farmer, has a passion for writing and for politics and for writing about politics. E-mail comments to news@randolphguide.com or directly to Younts at tlyounts0209@email.campbell.edu

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