It is too bad that this Phillip Klein article hasn’t gotten a lot more play. Klein points out that out that there isn’t even one panel on health care policy at the Conservative Political Action Conference. I remember seeing a speech by Chris DeMuth in the late-1990s where he said that health care policy would be the most important economic battleground between liberal and conservatives in the coming decades.
This hasn’t sunk in among conservative activists and within the conservative popular media ecosystem. Like Klein says, conservatives tend to deemphasize health care policy unless the liberal are about to make some major step toward more government-run health care. Then, when the latest liberal effort ends (whether in success or failure), conservatives go back to not talking or thinking about health care policy very much. So, from the conservative side, health care policy disputes become an endless exercise in line drawing and retreat. When one line is overrun, conservatives draw a new line and wait for the next attack. This is all very convenient for liberals. When they win, they win. When they don’t win, they don’t actually lose. They just hold on to the status quo create by their most recent win.
CPAC has been the subject of a lot of criticism this year, but the problem isn’t just with the organizers on that convention. The disconnection of the conservative activist base and populist media from affirmative health care policy is deeply damaging and not-at-all new. It means that anybody who has real concerns about health care delivery and cost is driven to the Democrats because they are the only ones who are offering answers that go beyond attacks on the trial lawyers and generalities about getting government out of health care.
March 2nd, 2013 | 12:33 am
[...] Political Action Conference. I remember seeing a speech by Chris DeMuth in the late-1990s where he …read more Source: Postmodern [...]
March 2nd, 2013 | 8:28 am
If the basic principle of CPAC about health care and American medicine is that it is none of the government’s damned business, then why does the organization need a panel to reiterate that?
March 2nd, 2013 | 10:48 am
Kate, I suppose that if they felt that way, they could call for the abolition of Medicare, but I suspect they would be beaten into comas by elderly Tea Partiers.
So since federal-level government policy is here to stay in one form or another, and since the form of that policy matters (would you want that which is favored by Paul Ryan or Bernie Sanders?), then deemphasizing the issue only make the government health care policy we will experience the exclusive business of the Democratic party. But at least we focus on real issues like cutting Mitt Romney’s tax rates and opposing “socialism” in every way possible (protesting, wearing funny hats, complaining of losing our country to those kids with their long hair and Obamacare) short of actually thinking about how to beat socialists and offering real alternatives.
March 2nd, 2013 | 1:03 pm
I have never been to a CPAC, but you present a vivid picture of it.
You are certainly right about some of the Tea Party groups being all about the conservatism of Medicare preservation. Given the healthcare system as it is today, it is certainly in their self-interest to demand Medicare benefits as the alternative is an evaporation of their assets in case of illness is likely. At the moment, I do not see what a coherent health care policy would be. Mind, I know you and others have laid out sensible plans and worked out reasonable policy suggestions. How do you “Rah-Rah” those things at an event like the one you describe?
Actually, when I was looking around for the post I wrote this morning, I hit on a website about conservative health care policy. Hmmm. Why aren’t they at CPAC? I wonder.
March 2nd, 2013 | 6:06 pm
Pete,
I remember at one point during my sophomore year in college I had some small college success with a play I wrote and fancied myself the next David Mamet. At 19-years of age I kicked myself for having devoted so many of my best years to politics when I should have been writing plays (hi-larious!).
Now, nearly 30 years later I’m still kicking myself, but for the first time since I was 19 I have actually managed to stop paying attention, or I at least stopped paying attention to 80% of what I used to pay attention to (and spent tens of thousands on, and wrote about, and so on).
I heard recently that the big idea for the revival of the Illinois GOP is an endorsement of the redefinition of marriage. Maybe it was just civil unions…I can’t remember. Our two leading GOP candidates for governor next time are both thought gay by just about everyone, and they offer only enough lip service to social issues to make clear that they aren’t sincere about it (think Obama saying how a marriage can only be between a man and a woman).
I hope I don’t sound whiny, because I don’t feel that way at all. Bernard said the church is in the best position when it is under attack from all sides and so with the GOP keeping itself within a 10% reach of the Abortion Party, things for the church should be looking very good. By Jefferson’s count we are way, way past time for another revolution and I can’t say the dim prospect of that cheers me.
Because all my friends and my far more numerous acquaintances are mostly all Republicans of some stripe or another, I still hear most of the talk. The younger they are the more convinced they are if only the GOP would green light the government redefinition of marriage, family and life itself, they will then be able to make the government their GOP lap dog on all the stuff that really matters, like marginal tax rates.
So all this is my way of asking, what in God’s name do they talk about at CPAC these days? Crazy kids.
March 2nd, 2013 | 8:25 pm
Michael, I would be deeply skeptical of any quick, easy, and simple solution to the GOP.
Kate, I think the big problem is path dependence. What would be harder to “rah rah” than high earner tax cuts to an audience of high earners? But tax cuts are part of a Republican narrative of electoral and policy success in the 1980s so it is considered a “real” political issue in the way that health care policy isn’t. What did health care ever do for Ronald Reagan? Helath care policies like Indiana’s HSA/catastrophic health insurance program for state employees would seem to offer more benefits to more people.
March 5th, 2013 | 8:43 pm
[...] And Republican activists have to be careful to avoid a kind of anti-policy orientation that masquerades as small government principle. We want small government so the government shouldn’t focus on policy areas A, B, and C. Well, the government is heavily involved in these areas and the state of public opinion is such that a full extrication is politically impossible and everybody knows it. So the answer for much of the center-right is to largely ignore these areas of policy until it is time to fight the next Democratic advance. This “small government” orientation becomes, in practice, a defense of a statist status quo and guarantees that liberals can’t lose (though… [...]
March 8th, 2013 | 9:00 pm
CPAC has made some good and bad decision over the years, but the recent trends in decision-making has many questioning its continued relevancy in America’s political process. It’s difficult to side with an organization that focuses so much on one brand of ideology to alienate the party it strives to help.
http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2013/03/08/is-cpac-relevant/
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact