Yes. In spite of the fact that every news story for the last two months has told you there is no possible way the Republicans will let this bill get through, rest assured there will be one. If there isn’t, I will personally seek out Pancho Villa’s favorite sombrero and consume it with habanero sauce. Since I am terrified of habanero sauce and have no idea where any of Pancho Villa’s belongings are at present, I should explain to you why I am so confident about the prospects for (real) health care reform.
Passage in the House is a foregone conclusion. Liberals may bay and whinny, but in the end they’ll accept a good bill over their conception of a perfect one, and enough Blue Dogs will sign on to secure passage.
In the Senate, Olympia Snowe is the key. A moderate Republican from Maine, she is the last remaining Republican trying to compromise on the healthcare effort in committee, and has left her stamp on the version the Finance Committee will be reporting this week. If she votes for the final bill, her colleague Susan Collins, also a moderate Republican of Maine, would be very much pressed to follow suit. Regardless of whatever Collins does, the presence of Ms. Snowe’s Republicanism in the “yea” column will give heart to wavering moderate Democrats like Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. I believe that even one Republican voting yes would do more to cement the Democratic caucus in favor than any amount of whipping Dick Durbin has to offer.
The longer the process drags on and Ms. Snowe does not bail on reform efforts the more invested in the process she becomes. The people of Maine (a decidedly left leaning state which chose Obama 57-40%) would be far from pleased to note that she invested herself into getting an acceptable compromise on a bill they (on balance) support and then bailed.
The Republican caucus has tried to get her to do just that, with John Cornyn (R-Texas), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (which supports Republican senate candidates) suggesting that if she did not stop negotiating with Democrats the committee would challenge her in her next primary with a conservative. Nevermind that a conservative in the modern sense of the term is not electable in Maine, and defeating Snowe would be as good as handing the seat to a mainstream liberal Democrat. The Republican leadership knows that Snowe is the key variable, and they have realized how litte of her place she really owes to them. Olympia Snowe is, when she chooses to be, wholly independent of her caucus with total impunity. She is the variable in the Senate and, I believe she is in far too deep to back out now.
Not only is she in too deep to back out, but her own support of a conditional (or “triggered”) public option shows that she is willing to compromise with the Democratic leadership on even this most contentious of healthcare issues. Moderate Dems Tom Carper of Delaware and Ben and Bill Nelson of Nebraska and Florida, respectively, are willing to follow her lead to a compromise. This combined picture as well as the conciliatory attitude of Senate and White House leaders toward her position mean that her vote can be had. If Olympia Snowe votes yes, the health care bill will pass.
The facts in this picture are creating a momentum and inexorability toward passage. The Republican Party, which not a month ago thought it had felled yet another Democratic Administration over healthcare issues, is in grave danger of missing their opportunity to be involved and take credit for their contributions. Would they have to make disproportionate concessions? Naturally. That tends to happen when the other party has more votes than you by half. But involving themselves now that their ability to block it is in serious and well justified doubt takes healthcare off the table as a campaign issue for Democrats. The downside of swinging for the fences on 0 and 2 is that if you miss you’ve struck out. The Republicans are down to their last swing and need to, continuing the metaphor, settle for contact and a single. If they do not, the healthcare issue will hurt them in 2010. Mark my words.
What makes me say that? While polling shows support for the “healthcare reforms in congress” and “the President’s healthcare plan” are tepid at best, support for the reforms themselves, mandated but subsidized coverage, the insurance regulations, a government run competitor to private insurers, remain popular by exceptional margins. If Democrats run on the elements of the bill rather than the bill itself in 2010, the Republicans will have been wholly outmaneuvered.
Some Republicans are starting to understand that, although none of them are in congress. Former Senate majority leader Bill Frist said that he would support the bill, however imperfect, if he were voting in Congress today. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (who failed spectacularly in giving the Republican Response to the President’s joint-sission address last winter) is warning Senate Republicans publicly to compromise on the bill and get involved. There is a growing unease among individual Republican leaders that they are voluntarily sacrificing the electoral boon of helping accomplish healthcare reform. Unless the leaders in congress heed their warnings, the Republicans will suffer a major strategic defeat.
-Phil Sizemore (Marietta College Democrats Vice President)
