The Republicans in House of Representatives have decided to go to the mattresses over Obamacare, to borrow yet another cliché from the “Godfather” movies, and will likely vote today to withhold funding for the hated health care law no matter what the consequences. We wish them well in the effort, and offer whatever support we can provide, but we can’t quite shake a certain nervousness about it.
Even such slight hesitation will no doubt incur the scorn of all the right-wing talk radio talkers who have been urging the GOP to fight this battle, with ample scoffing at anyone who balks as a squishy establishment “RINO” who secretly likes Obamacare. This sort of name-calling does not persuade us, as we are quite rock-ribbed in our Republicanism, instinctively anti-establishment by temperament, and take a back seat to no one in our loathing of Obamacare, and neither does it allay a suspicion that there might be some other way to do away with the law more permanently and with less political risk. There’s a chance the Republicans’ gambit might succeed spectacularly, and we’ll be ardently hoping that it will, but any cocksureness about it will only increase the chances it could prove a debacle.
After the Republican-controlled House passes a budget without funding for Obamacare it will surely be voted down in the Democrat-controlled Senate, and even in the highly unlikely event that the Senate went along the resulting bill would surely be voted by the president, so the resulting lack of a budget or continuing resolution or some other legislative sleight-of-hand would shut down much of the government for a prolonged period. Democrats cannot abandon Obamacare without admitting they were wrong, a fate far worse than anything the stupid law will wind up inflicting on the country, and they will not fear the public relations consequences of a government shutdown. This is fine by the flame-throwing conservatives who are insisting on this strategy, and it would be no bother and a nice respite from bureaucratic busybodies to us, but with crucial mid-term elections looming in the next year it is important to consider what the apolitical majority of the country might think. A partial government shutdown would only affect the average American to whatever extent the executive branch chooses, as the de-funding faction rightly argues, but somebody is bound to be inconvenienced and it is a sure bet that major media outlets will quickly interview them for a heartbreaking feature story. The stories will be bogged down with lots of blather about mandatory spending and parliamentary procedure and official government statistics, so millions of Americans will simply take note of the headline about evil Republicans sowing anarchy to punish the poor.
None of the numerous past government shutdowns have been the electoral disaster for Republicans that popular myth suggests, as the de-funders rightly argue, but neither have they ever proved popular. Former House Speaker and government shut-down enthusiast Newt Gingrich kept citing all the election results from his time with the gavel when running for president last time around, but he was forced to do so because so many people still remember him as the mean ol’ bastard who wanted to cut government spending while President Bill Clinton is still remembered as the economic genius who somehow delivered a balanced budget. The major news outlets aren’t as major as they were back then, and conservative media have since built up a large choir to preach to, but it is still too soon to dismiss the opinion-making power of the opposition.
This time could be different, the de-funders argue, and there are tempting reasons to believe they are right. Obamacare is hugely unpopular and becoming more unpopular as it creeps into effect, with important Democratic constituencies such as the labor unions now among the critics, and even the most partisan reporters will find it hard to explain a government shutdown without mentioning that it has something to do with the law. The law’s eponymous president is also unpopular, and comes across as churlish and defensive and disconnected from economic reality every time he speaks in defense of it, so even the unloved Republicans will have something close to equal standing with the standing with the public. Those Republicans will have the better argument, too, although that rarely matters in a war for public approval.
Still, there’s something in our rock-ribbed Republican souls that would prefer a more cautious — and dare we say conservative — approach. Obamacare has become more unpopular with every step of its haphazard and politically-motivated implementation, and it seems likely that full implementation would result in complete unpopularity, so letting the damn thing happen to point that everyone’s nose can be rubbed in it would make a complete repeal and utter repudiation possible. This course would do damage to the health care system, allow millions of Americans to start relying on subsidies they will be reluctant to relent, and incur other undeniable risks, but sometimes that’s what it takes to get a policy right. The people getting the subsidies will be out-numbered by those paying for them, at least in the beginning, and the former category is far less likely to vote than the latter, so opposition to Obamacare will be a good issue for Republicans in both the ’14 and ’16 elections. Should Obamacare be somehow stopped before its full implementation the Democrats will spend the rest of our lives waxing poetic about the glorious utopia that might have been, enough of the public will believe it to keep the dream alive, and a rare chance to definitively disprove the nonsense will be lost. This strategy would displease much of the Republican party’s increasingly restive base, many of whom have a distressing tendency to sit out elections even if it means empowering the craziest sorts of Democrats, but at least it would not provide any headlines that would disturb the slumber of the apolitical majority.
The Republicans in Congress have decided to spurn our wise counsel, however, and once they are set on their course we can only hope they will pursue to a satisfactory conclusion. Obamacare must be done away with, one way or another, and if this one works we will be glad of it. Winning the day will require a party unity that we are quite willing to uphold, and plenty of media savvy that we cannot provide, so we will endure our nervousness. We recommend plenty of what the pols call “message discipline,” and can count on the right-wing talk radio talkers for that. The Republicans’ congressional leadership already seems to have distilled this complicated matter down to a “Tweet”-sized message that Obama is willing to shut down the federal government for his hated Obamacare law, which is a fair and compelling summation, and despite our misgivings about the strategy we will try to help it along.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 