NY Times:
And in a week when Democrats are celebrating the passage of a historic piece of legislation, Republicans find themselves again being portrayed as the party of no, associated with being on the losing side of an often acrid debate and failing to offer a persuasive alternative agenda.
WaPo:
Making clear that the recently passed health-care legislation will be a major point of debate in the 2012 presidential race, Republicans eying a run for the top spot sought to one-up each other with their condemnations of the bill.
Eugene Robinson:
Most Republican opponents of health-care reform had the decency -- and the political sense -- to disavow the racist and homophobic attacks. Incredibly, some did not. Rep. Devin Nunes of California told C-SPAN: "Yeah, well I think that when you use totalitarian tactics, people, you know, begin to act crazy. I think, you know, there's people that have every right to say what they want. If they want to smear someone, they can do it." And Rep. Steve King of Iowa airily dismissed the incident: "I just don't think it's anything. . . . There are a lot of places in this country that I couldn't walk through. I wouldn't live to get to the other end of it."
Michael Gerson:
The immediate political judgment on Obama is likely to be harsh. The historical judgment is, by nature, uncertain. Obama can (correctly) comfort himself that he has altered the health-care debate in America forever. When Republicans eventually return to power, they will attempt to modify the package through the introduction of more market-oriented elements. They will not attempt to abolish health-care reform. What Republican would want to campaign on a return to the exclusion of insurance coverage because of preexisting conditions? Obama has created legislative facts on the ground that will shape every future health-care debate.
Gerson's apocalyptic vision is what David Frum was arguing against when he lost the argument. Giuliani is arguing to 'do better, don't repeal', Gerson is arguing to do nothing. Neither will fly. And any conservative who thinks they can lie about the polls and shape the future is lying to themselves. Here, check out these next two:
Media Matters on CNN poll:
This shows that 52% of Americans either support the current bill or wish it was even more "liberal" while 43% believe it is too liberal.
That hardly reveals that a "vast majority of Americans opposed this monstrosity." In fact, it shows that Democratic leaders carefully threaded the needle of public opinion. President Obama and Democrats in Congress successfully crafted a bill that is progressive enough for all but 13% of the country and falls well within the political mainstream, yet is still ambitious enough to deliver the much-needed change Americans desperately need.
Sam Stein:
A failed effort by Republican lawmakers to unite behind the defeat of health care legislation has done little to dissuade GOP leadership from offering unbending opposition to the president's agenda.
David Brooks:
For apostates like me, watching this bill go through the meat grinder was like watching an old family reunion. One glimpse and you got the whole panoply of what you loved and found annoying about these people.
Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi were fit to play the leading roles. They both embody the two great wings of the party, the high-minded aspirations of the educated class and the machinelike toughness of the party apparatus. Obama and Pelosi both possess the political tenaciousness that you only get if you live for government and believe ruthlessly in its possibilities. They could have scaled back their aspirations at any time but they hung tough.
Wow. Almost honest.
The Democratic Party, as it revealed of itself over the past year, does not seem to be up to that coming challenge (neither is the Republican Party). This country is in the position of a free-spending family careening toward bankruptcy that at the last moment announced that it was giving a gigantic new gift to charity. You admire the act of generosity, but you wish they had sold a few of the Mercedes to pay for it.
I'm waiting for the always absent "(neither is the Republican Party)" column. Sometimes the choices are binary, and in the run-up for progressives, it wasn't fun. As for conservatives... they got nothing at all to offer except 'just say no'. You can't win on that, nor will it do anything for the country.
