Healthcare Reform 2: The Quickening

My co-author, being an ignorant slut, is still parroting his belief that what he reads on the syndicated NYT opinion pages or the WSJ opinion pages have any traction within the larger right-wing rank and file.  Specifically, on one topic: healthcare.

What my friend cannot seem to see is that healthcare reform reform, much like immigration reform, is a cause without an Army.  On the right-wing.  A banner with no legions behind it.  Those who even broach the idea, in a lesser-of-two-evils vein, are almost immediately shot down as collaborators.  The right-wing (not even the far right) have talked themselves into a corner.  They have not said that ACA is wrong or ineffective or bad policy.  They say, and have the conviction I might add, that it is fundamentally unconstitutional and illegal.  Without a hint of irony, they say that President Obama and all those who have passed ACA are guilty of treason.  They say this quietly, to their own.  Boehner goes on TV and says that ACA is bad policy but I think we can finally appreciate that this is the thin veneer of moderation.  Most of his members and the blogs and the talking heads, when discussing it, say words like "un-American" and "unconstitutional."  This is the reality of the right-wing.

They no longer have the ability to talk about ACA in any vein except the repeal vein.  I think most pundits say and think that they refuse to talk about anything but repeal out of some simplistic old-fashioned stratagem of refusing to accept defeat and give your enemy a victory by backing down. Buying time for them to work a backroom deal. That would imply that they COULD talk about anything but repeal.  The rank and file right-wing will paint anyone who even attempts to keep and alter ACA as on par with Neville Chamberlin's negotiations.  Fundamentally flawed.

The polling about whether this constituency or that group supports certain provisions, such as the pre-existing conditions provision, misses the point entirely.  The author, the brief history, the name, the paper the law is written on is, itself, toxic in the right-wing's calculus.  And let's be honest, this isn't SS or medicare or income tax, which all share a similar hatred with ACA in the eyes of most of the right-wing.   Those are propped up by a much longer history to make them appear much more solid and complicated in the calculus of the rank and file.  That time has interwoven them into the fabric of many people's idea of America.  ACA has no such luck.  To right-wingers of all stripes it is a cancer within the American system.  The (vast) majority of right-wing is convinced of two things (1) repealing ACA is possible and (2) repealing ACA is their patriotic duty.

No reform plan, no matter how well made or sensible or conservative will make it past the most vocal/passionate/convinced/active members of the right-wing, or as more commonly known: the Republican primary voters.