Democrats didn’t lose the battle of 2010. They won it.
6th November 2010
William Saletan, in Slate magazine, makes a good case.
But if health care did cost the party its majority, so what? The bill was more important than the election.
If your goal is ideological, then it doesn’t matter whether you survive the battle, so long as your ideological accomplishment remains in place.
The big picture isn’t about winning or keeping power. It’s about using it.
We still have Obamacare and a multi-trillion-dollar expansion of the Federal debt. And those aren’t likely to go away any time soon; trimmed, perhaps, but still there. Call it ‘Ratcheting Socialism’ if you will.
A party that loses a House seat can win it back two years later, as Republicans just proved. But a party that loses a legislative fight against a middle-class health care entitlement never restores the old order. Pretty soon, Republicans will be claiming the program as their own. Indeed, one of their favorite arguments against this year’s health care bill was that it would cut funding for Medicare. Now they’re pledging to rescind those cuts. In 30 years, they’ll be accusing Democrats of defunding Obamacare.
I wish I could say that he’s wrong. But, given the record of the Republican Party during my lifetime, I’m very much afraid that he’s right. The problem with being ‘a conservative’ is that what there is to be conserved keeps moving to the Left.