22 March 2010

Waterloo Sunday, Cannae in November?

Posted by Connor under: Obama Administration; Politics .

One week until the deadline for Google Fiber applications due. Editing video and talking to people. And working.

So, yeah. Remember last July when Senator Jim DeMint declared that Republican’s would make health care “Obama’s Waterloo?” How’s your French, Jim? There were two great generals in that battle. I guess Obama gets to be Wellington.

But seriously, this blog has been saying for more than a year that the GOP was playing a dangerous game by betting the farm on absolute opposition to all Democratic initiatives. And now where are they?

Republican David Frum hits the nail on the head:

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed.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.

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.

Funny how circumstances can change, innit? American’s are now going to have eight months to decide for themselves how they like the reality of health care reform as law, as opposed to the spectre of Obamacare socialist fantasy. They’ll find that the red flag does not fly above the United States and that freedom has not evaporated.

Instead they may just decide that they have an expanded view of freedom; freedom from needless pain and suffering; freedom from the hideous choice between food and medicine; freedom from the fear and shame of debt and bankruptcy.

Millions will come to grips with the fact that this is what change looks like. It looks pretty much like the day before except perhaps just a bit brighter.

The sun will rise on a November morning eight months from now and millions of Americans will then cast their votes based on the realities of what has been done this week, not the fears. They will have had time to reflect on what political courage means and what it’s worth both as a matter for the pocketbook and the history books.

And history will write, not one single Republican voted for it. And if yesterday was Waterloo, might November look like Cannae?

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