Leave aside the broader health care reform debate and what the Democrats want out of this process. Why are the Republicans not using their elected offices to advance policies that serve their own supporters?
Their main voting constituency is middle class (or higher) white families in the suburbs, particularly the husbands and fathers in that constituency. They don't face the raft of problems that others do in our society. But one big problem that they do face is that something beyond their control happens to someone in their family. Medical catastrophes have to rank high on that list -- they certainly do for me. If a member of my family were to be afflicted with an expensive medical condition, then I am financialy viable only for as long as I stay insured with my current employer. Put simply, there are gaps in private insurance markets that leave such families exposed. This is plain to see and should be the focus of Republican efforts on health care reform, along the lines that I have discussed over the past six months (most recently here).
Not sure what Samwick (who worked in the Bush 43 administration) is getting at here. Speaking as a white, middle class husband and father (although not one living in a suburb), I can say that the GOP opponents to health care reform, especially those in the Senate and on Sarah Palin's facebook page, are doing exactly what I would hope they would do; that is, oppose this bill with every parliamentary and rhetorical device in their quiver. Their calls for incremental reforms, especially for the decoupling of insurance from employment and the creation of a true interstate market for health insurance, are - again - exactly what I would want them to do.
Really, if we only have the choice of doing nothing and adopting Obamacare as currently drafted, neither of which are happy prospects, I would choose to do nothing; and I would hope the GOP would wear its "Party of No" stripes proudly. I have no problem muddling through with the present system. But creating a trillion dollar entitlement to deliver "free" health care (paid for largely with the taxes of the sort of people who naturally gravitate to the GOP)? Based on the progressive's love of crisis mongering, cheap sentiment and dodgy statistics? No thanks.
The average GOP voter is not some passive lump sitting around waiting for the alderman to deliver a Thanksgiving turkey. Unlike certain political parties I could name, there isn't a laundry list of line items that GOP voters "want" the government to deliver to them. More likely, we have a list of things that we'd like the government to give back!
I would agree that, back during the Bush 43 administration, the GOP probably missed an opportunity to enact some of the incremental reforms they are pushing now. As I recall, we had to spend a lot of dealing arguing over stupid crap like "comprehensive" immigration reform, Hurricane Katrina, and a quixotic attempt to reform (comprehensively, of course) social security. And, big government Republicans like Samwick were the reason for this. The love of comprehensive reform trumped the party's preference for incrementalism. Now Samwick would castigate the GOP for failing to follow in his footsteps? Please.
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