The article itself (via Hot Air) is reasonable enough, but the real fun is watching the screaming in the comments sections from various of TMV’s commenters – said screaming partially because there’s nothing shriller than an Online Left commenter having one of their treasured talking points demolished, but mostly because the Online Left commentariat hates conservatives, and wants us all to die in fires.
Oops, did I just type that out? Whoops! For some reason, we’re expected not to make that rather obvious observation.
Moe Lane
PS: Anybody who can comment here is generally considered an exception to that designation. My general rule of thumb is whether they can type out “Republican” without mutating it into a slur.
Crossposted to RedState.
Why hasn’t there been more promotion of a Republican health care plan?
Because before you can train a mule – excuse me; a Democratic party legislator – you have to get the mule’s attention.
Moe: Thanks for this tip. I avoid TMV (irony points for their name though) so I would never have seen this. I’m going to have to take a look at that bill now. I knew there were proposals out there – I’ve heard most of those points brought up – but I never realized a bill had been introduced.
Matt: because the GOP leadership sucks at messaging. It’s rare enough that the Republicans in Washington come up with anything worthwhile. When they do, they never seem to know what to do with it! Just means some of us need to be watching Washington more closely, and when something worth supporting comes up we have to do their job for them and promote the crap out of it back here in the real world. Or we could, you know, get someone elected who can find their butt with their hands. [/rant]
Actually, F-RO, this time there’s a plan. At least on the House side. The GOP leadership there is *pissed* at the way that Madame Speaker thought that she could treat them like she does her own caucus.
Ok leadership aside, why hasn’t this blog pushed the GOP plan?
Because I don’t do things out of order, Matt. The Democrats started this mess by locking out the GOP entirely from the debate; we are now showing them the consequences of that error. We will be happy to engage in the discussion – once they publicly back down, and admit that they were wrong to try to run roughshod over us at the start. Until then: karma. It’s what’s for dinner.
A good reason not to push a plan right now is that any huge omnibus plan is going to get out of control in the committees and other horse-trading that will inevitably occur if/when push comes to shove. I don’t want three good conservative/libertarian ideas combined with five fatal far-left ideas that are slippery-slopes to universal mandates and government takeover.
I prefer Congress pass no bills that jumble all this mess and hopey-change trial balloons into one big package. I want a bill focused on one element of the problem, with specific tactics to deal with the disadvantages of that issues, and attention to the predictable side-effects and potential incentives to game the changed system.
Trying to “fix” one-sixth of the economy from a centralized perspective will make it worse, guaranteed. Chipping away the ossified barnacles dragging the whole system down is the only way we can hope to eventually reverse some of the distortions.