Month: March 2010

Matt Steinglass echoes the Dish:

If [Douthat] wants to help make sure that health-care reform doesn't increase the deficit, he can start encouraging Republican members of Congress to vote to make sure Medicare payments actually get cut, and to make sure that the tax on Cadillac health-insurance plans actually kicks in. It would be much better for the country if Republicans devoted their energies to working to improve the health-care reform that's just been passed, rather than sitting back and watching with the intention of blaming it on Democrats if it fails.

Saletan sees some signs:

His political advisers are hinting at a more aggressive strategy: portraying Republicans who oppose the legislation as opposing all of its benefits. In the Bush administration, this was standard practice.

Any Democrat who resisted any component of a bill was accused of opposing the bill’s objective. If you complained about labor provisions of the bill to establish a federal department of homeland security, Republicans said you were against homeland security. If you objected to part of the “Patriot Act,” they said you were unpatriotic. If you criticized Bush’s execution of the Iraq war, they said you were undermining our troops.

Obama has avoided this scorched-earth style of politics. But his advisers seem ready to try it. “Let them tell a child with a pre-existing condition, ‘We don’t think you should be covered,’ ” David Axelrod said of Republicans last night…

This is the risk Republicans have taken by voting unanimously against health care reform. They’ve bet their whole party against it. If the public hates the program, they’ll be rewarded at the polls. But if the public likes it, they’re in trouble. And if the public fears it might be taken away, they could suffer a beating, as they did in 1996 when voters feared cuts in Medicare.

I don’t think this is “Rovian” by the way. It’s called contrast and compare. If the bill becomes more popular, what people will remember is that the GOP did all they could to kill it, and every tea-party meltdown will be in the minds of voters.

Obama’s genius is not attacking his opposition head-first. It is patiently assisting its self-destruction. First Clinton; then McCain; then Palin; now the GOP as a whole.

Chait reads a Clive Crook column all the way through.

Hard Truths From George Friedman:

Israel sees the American preoccupation in these other regions [Iran and IraAf-Pak and India], along with the current favorable alignment of forces in its region, as an opportunity both to consolidate and expand its power and to create new realities on the ground. One of these is building in East Jerusalem, or more precisely, using the moment to reshape the demographics and geography of its immediate region. The Israeli position is that it has rights in East Jerusalem that the United States cannot intrude on. The U.S. position is that it has interests in the broader region that are potentially weakened by this construction at this time.

Israel’s desire to do so is understandable, but it runs counter to American interests. The United States, given its overwhelming challenges, is neither interested in Israel’s desire to reshape its region, nor can it tolerate any more risk deriving from Israel’s actions. However small the risks might be, the United States is maxed out on risk. Therefore, Israel’s interests and that of the United States diverge. Israel sees an opportunity; the United States sees more risk.

The problem Israel has is that, in the long run, its relationship to the United States is its insurance policy. Netanyahu appears to be calculating that given the U.S. need for a western balance of power, whatever Israel does now will be allowed because in the end the United States needs Israel to maintain that balance of power. Therefore, he is probing aggressively. Netanyahu also has domestic political reasons for proceeding with this construction. For him, this construction is a prudent and necessary step.

Obama’s task is to convince Netanyahu that Israel has strategic value for the United States, but only in the context of broader U.S. interests in the region. If Israel becomes part of the American problem rather than the solution, the United States will seek other solutions. That is a hard case to make but not an impossible one. The balance of power is in the eastern Mediterranean, and there is another democracy the United States could turn to: Turkey — which is more than eager to fulfill that role and exploit Israeli tensions with the United States.

No wonder he’s popular abroad:

What a load of hooey. I think Amanpour is a brilliant idea for hosting This Week, calm, authoritative, not caught up in Beltway process, able to say what she thinks – on torture and Israel, for example – while remaining careful to include other views. Genius. A vast improvement on the charisma-free insider, Stephanopoulos.

A new Gallup poll shows a bounce for the health care bill.

The WaPo has a calculator. The NYT tries to explain the requirements for small businesses. They are taking questions on the subject here. I think this is when the bill gets more popular. But we'll see.

Massie admires the American system:

[S]ure, you could look at a year of grinding health-care debate, some of it tedious and some of it ridiculous, and complain that this shows how broken American politics is. But I think it may actually be the other way round: the system is neither irretrievably nor fundamentally broken and the United States, by dint of history and diversity, remains the great experimental, democratic melting pot.

The sad day – the day when we'll know something really has changed – is when big stuff happens in Congress and no-one cares. Happily that prospect still seems some way off.