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rdean
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The 1993 Kristol Memo on Defeating Health Care Reform
"Health care will prove to be an enormously healthy project for Clinton... and for the Democratic Party." So predicts Stanley Greenberg, the president's strategist and pollster. If a Clinton health care plan succeeds without principled Republican opposition, Mr. Greenberg will be right. Because the initiative's inevitably destructive effect on American medical services will not be practically apparent for several years--no Carter-like gas lines, in other words--its passage in the short run will do nothing to hurt (and everything to help) Democratic electoral prospects in 1996. But the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse--much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for "security" on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.
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Republicans were terrified that Health Care would be as popular as Social Security. They already convinced the Middle Class that the GOP supports the middle class by deregulation, small government (except in the bedroom) and no health care.
Giving the middle class the security of health care would prove the GOP ideology is a bogus, self destructive mess. Republicans would be completely irrelevant.
Former Sen. Scott Brown visits Rep. Herb Richardson at home
The problem they now have is Republicans like Rep. Herb Richardson standing up at fundraising events and saying "Thank God For Obamacare". How can you convince people something is bad when even Republicans are benefiting from it?
Worse, it makes Republicans look like they are dishonest and against the Middle Class. Which, of course, they are.
"Health care will prove to be an enormously healthy project for Clinton... and for the Democratic Party." So predicts Stanley Greenberg, the president's strategist and pollster. If a Clinton health care plan succeeds without principled Republican opposition, Mr. Greenberg will be right. Because the initiative's inevitably destructive effect on American medical services will not be practically apparent for several years--no Carter-like gas lines, in other words--its passage in the short run will do nothing to hurt (and everything to help) Democratic electoral prospects in 1996. But the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse--much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for "security" on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.
------------------------------
Republicans were terrified that Health Care would be as popular as Social Security. They already convinced the Middle Class that the GOP supports the middle class by deregulation, small government (except in the bedroom) and no health care.
Giving the middle class the security of health care would prove the GOP ideology is a bogus, self destructive mess. Republicans would be completely irrelevant.
Former Sen. Scott Brown visits Rep. Herb Richardson at home
The problem they now have is Republicans like Rep. Herb Richardson standing up at fundraising events and saying "Thank God For Obamacare". How can you convince people something is bad when even Republicans are benefiting from it?
Worse, it makes Republicans look like they are dishonest and against the Middle Class. Which, of course, they are.
