I said some months back that I'm a Republican who supports reforming the health care system and that I wanted to see a full overhaul of the health care system from what we have now into something along the lines of that which Germany and/or Japan has.
Obviously, the bill which passed Congress wasn't that, but I am still quite pleased by it. The bill is not perfect, but I'm not going to let the good be the enemy of the perfect here...it's an improvement over what we've got now, and I'll go with it.
A serious shout-out needs to go to Joseph Cao. This man is what the future of the Republican Party needs to be. Not that it will be, but that it needs to be. When the teabaggers and the birthers and the deathers are done wrecking the place over here, this is what we need to have to turn to. The man is undoubtedly enduring more than a little bit of partisan Hell right now for his stand...but he is the kind of Republican we need in the long run if the GOP is going to regain its sanity.
The amendment that Cao obtained on the healthcare bill, restricting funding for abortion, is one place where I know some of us are going to disagree. It was the only thing that I was uncomfortable about the bill passing without, and with it I've got no reservations.
As Talking Points Memo noted with a good dose of irony,
right after Cao was elected, the House GOP boasted of his upset win as a sign of the GOP's comeback, and that he presented a path to future victories. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) declared: "The Future Is Cao."
I think Steele is more true in saying this now than he was last fall. As long as a health care bill, any bill, gets to Obama's desk and gets signed, history suggests that Republicans are going to need to accept its presence. Reform and cost controls will be arguable (and in my mind not necessarily a bad thing), but abolition will probably be out of the question.
Yet looking at the people leading the Republican Party (Sarah Palin, anyone?), that's not what we're going to get. We're going to get a party that is going to be dedicated to killing the health care bill running. They will likely be encouraged by decent off-year results in 2009 and, very likely, 2010 (where I expect to see at least some seats in Congress shift towards the GOP...the House, at least, has some low-hanging fruit such as VA-5 (Goode's old seat) and VA-2 (Drake's old seat) which they'll get back part of). And then, with health care in place for two to three years by the time 2012 rolls around, I expect all of their energy to come to very little.
In the 1950 UK General Election, even the Tories didn't come out against the NHS. Instead, they promised
We pledge ourselves to maintain and improve the Health Service. Every year the Estimates laid before Parliament have been greatly exceeded. Administrative efficiency and economy and correct priorities throughout the whole service must be assured, so that a proper balance is maintained and the hardest needs are met first. In particular the balance of the dental service should be restored so that children and mothers receive attention.
Much as the current bill is not perfect and can take improvements from all sides, the NHS that Labour put in place in the UK wasn't perfect (and still isn't), either. It needs all sides to work at it, to bring ideas to the table, but also (and I say this particularly to the majority of Republicans who chose to absent themselves from the negotiating process on this bill) to be willing to give meaningful ground.
Social conservatives need to remember that without Joseph Cao giving his vote to the bill, there might not have even been a vote on the Stupak Amendment, an amendment which will likely survive even the Senate and Conference in some form. And fiscal conservatives would also do well to note that by giving a bit, you can get at least some of what you want at the end of the day.
P.S. The lesson on Tuesday wasn't "don't run a moderate". It was "don't run an incompetent". Deeds and Scoff. were both moderates, but their campaigns failed because they seemed to have, at times, been run by rank amateurs.