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Froma Harrop: Republican Talk of a ‘Sensible Middle’ Makes No Sense
We keep hearing that “President Barack Obama should move to the center.” A variation on this theme is that he should find the “sensible middle” on policy.
But what the heck is the middle, given America’s screwball partisan rhetoric? Such appeals — mostly made by Republicans and “centrist” Democrats who need a compass — are meaningless, as the following example illustrates.
Kimball Rasmussen is an energy executive who travels the West with a slick presentation purporting to address concerns over climate change. Rasmussen, CEO of Utah-based Deseret Power, downplays the threat of global warming with cute cartoons and a pickle barrel of plain talk. He ends by “debunking” the myths about global warming.
The myths happen to be of Rasmussen’s own creation, carefully worded to misrepresent the findings of mainstream climatologists. His sources include some of the more tainted global-warming “skeptics.” One of his scientific experts, Christopher Horner, is actually a lawyer at the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute. Another is Dr. Roy Spencer, whose calculations have been widely discredited by his peers and who, by the way, also questions evolution.
At the end of his folksy talk, Rasmussen implores the audience to find a “sensible middle” in thinking about climate change. Well, if one side says the moon is made of lunar rock and the other that it’s made of green cheese, is the sensible-middle position that the moon is half-green cheese?
Switch to health care. After Democrats stripped the public option out of the Senate’s bill and deleted a plan to let those older than 55 join Medicare — two things so-called conservatives opposed — Republicans cynically implored Democrats to meet them halfway on health care. Halfway from where?
Other than their call to reform medical malpractice laws, Republicans have virtually no respectable ideas on fixing health care. Making up nonsense about government-run “death panels” is the level they’ve been working on.
The argument that the public option was merely a sop for the Democrats’ liberal base was spread both by demagogues and people who should have known better. Framing the public option as such diverted attention from its purpose: to contain what private insurers could charge for subsidized coverage. Real conservatives would have liked the idea of protecting the taxpayer.
Most Republicans aren’t conservatives at all. They’re corporate socialists. The party’s idea of market solutions is to see how many taxpayer dollars they can shovel into private coffers. Recall the Medicare drug benefit, which was designed to enrich drug companies and insurers — while being entirely paid for with borrowed money.
Spiraling health-care costs have put the U.S. economy in peril, but the alleged party of prosperity doesn’t care. Confusing the public is easy, especially at a time of economic trauma, and the Republicans’ masters in the health-care industry are delighted with the status quo. You see, it’s politics, not policy.
Now that they’ve come close to killing efforts to stem skyrocketing health-care costs, Republicans are turning to budget deficits. In a show of crashing hypocrisy, they’re now pleading with Democrats to “work with us.”
Last month, as the world’s markets grew jittery over our rising debt, Republicans strangled Senate legislation that would have established a Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action. Seven Republicans who co-sponsored the bill voted against it.
(The Tea Party people should remember their names: Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, John McCain of Arizona, John Ensign of Nevada, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Robert Bennett of Utah, Sam Brownback of Kansas and James Inhofe of Oklahoma.)
So this call to work with Republicans and find a political center is flimflam in overdrive. Americans’ anger is understandable, but the public must be discerning about which bums to throw out.
— Froma Harrop is an independent voice on politics, economics and culture, and blogs on RealClearPolitics.com. She is also a member of the editorial board at The Providence (R.I.) Journal. Click here to contact her at Creators.com.
Comments
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» on 02.21.10 @ 10:37 PM
Excellent article. It is always refreshing to see more light than heat, which is what Ms. Harrop provides. Thank you!
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» on 02.22.10 @ 06:08 AM
What a nutcase.
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» on 02.22.10 @ 08:02 AM
Tex805, you got to be a moron if you believe what you wrote. As for Froma, she might have had a compelling argument if she would have stayed away from global warming, something she hasn’t a clue about. Instead she dives for the religion and mocks her own argument. On top of that she babbles on about the rising cost of healthcare, something her party has written no legislation to address as they are too busy using this issue to push socialism instead. Costs in a free market are a function of supply and demand. Nothing in any of the bills introduced thus far does anything to increase supply but all do much to chock it off thus all bills to date will cause healthcare costs to rise and dramatically. We will have to pay that price no matter what economic distribution system the libs conjure up.
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» on 02.22.10 @ 08:47 AM
AN50, what makes you think we have a free market in healthcare. The consolidation of hospitals means in most towns, Santa Barbara is a prime example, there is just one hospital.
And I’m sure you are aware that insurance companies are EXEMPT from anti-trust laws.
So who sets prices when there is no free market? I’m hoping you will agree that in the absence of a free market, somebody has to intervene to prevent excesses.
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» on 02.22.10 @ 10:40 AM
To the Noozhawk:
I am disappointed. I thought there was going to be a change regarding comments on articles. If you look at AN50 there is still works that have nothing to do with points of view and abusive to others who comment:
-Moron
-Babbles
-Has not got a clue
Theese comments assume alot about a person he or she has never met and knows nothing about their background. It would be great if we could stick to commenting on the article or comments and not direct an attack at the author. There are various ranges of sensativity but if you want people to comment then the personal attacks need to stop (Your rule number 1 is not being followed)
Thank You
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» on 02.22.10 @ 12:38 PM
I agree with most of what has been said in this article. I think that Democrats deserve some criticism as well though. There have been multiple cases where they have pushed questionable pieces of this legislation through with the sole purpose of vote grabbing and other times when someone needed to fall on a sword to push legislation through and it wasn’t done. Democrats and Republicans have shown little or no ability to find true compromise throughout this process (for the dems this has been true even within their own party). Republicans have certainly done so with quite a bit of flamboyant ridiculousness, but ineptitude has been prevalent on all sides. The sad thing is that if 3-4 average citizens were asked to sit down and come up with a plan for fixing healthcare they could probably figure out something reasonable fairly easily.
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» on 02.22.10 @ 02:50 PM
AN50, to paraphrase Reagen, “there you go again” claiming the answer to healthcare costs lies in supply and demand. But you haven’t responded to my earlier note reminding you that there is little or no competition in healthcare. The law of supply and demand won’t operate where there is only one hospital in town (as in SB) and where insurance companies are exempt from anti-trust laws and are free to collude in price setting.
I suspect you are intellectually honest so please reconsider your reliance on supply and demand to solve our ballooning healthcare costs.
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» on 02.22.10 @ 02:59 PM
Infomaniac, you are right as rain. So the democrat solution is to further healthcare from the free market and just go totally with government control. How does that help? How does having a single entity that is already $11 trillion in debt, passing unfunded mandate after another going to make more resources available for healthcare? Where is the wealth going to come from to pay for more service we already are in short supply of? None of this is partisan mind you, just plain common sense, which if Local had any he would be arguing with me instead of crying like a freaking baby because I seem mean to him.
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» on 02.22.10 @ 03:37 PM
The plan that is on the table is in no way a “single entity” providing health care (If I am incorrect please show me factual evidence). In fact, the proposal relies heavily on the current market to make insurance available to more people at rates that lower income citizens can afford. The plan, as it currently exists, simply establishes a set of rules that insurance companies must abide by and extends the market so that collusion can no longer rule and actual competition can.
There is no “single entity” plan, there is no single payer plan, and there is not even a government option that is currently being seriously considered.
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» on 02.22.10 @ 04:00 PM
Attempts at civility resonding to each other are always appreciated.
Hypocrisy is D.C.‘s coin of the realm. There’s a lot of it on all sides.
Harrop may have some justification for being wary of Republicans sincerity about
“helping” on cost containment.
A number of the people listed, who publicly endorsed the plan, then voted against it
when it came to the floor, were the same ones who talk “economy”, but voted to bust one Bush budget after another, running the deficits to catastrophic levels.
It’s not just a Republican ailment, however.
There are very few electeds of any party in D.C. (or Sacramento) who are willing to
level with their constituents and red-meat home supporters about what’s really
required, then take political risks by voting to do what’s right, rather than what’s
easy.
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» on 02.22.10 @ 04:08 PM
AN50, the public option does not cut out the private options. If you look at the financials of the insurance companies you will see where the problem lies. As the cost of providing health care rises 5-6% annually, premiums rise more than twice as fast. Why? Margins and profits. Last year over $10 billion net on which they paid a tax rate of below 13%. This is just extraction from the system that provides no benefit except to the pad the pockets of a few very wealthy CEOs and executives. This occurs due to lack of competition and oversight when combined with an anti-trust exemption. This extraction of billions from the system is from individuals and employers. A study by the RAND Corporation concluded that having an employer provided healthcare system subject to insurance company premium increases was significantly contributing to our worldwide lack of competitiveness, slowing growth and job creation. So there you go AN50. If the cost of providing healthcare can be better controlled and billions no extracted from the system we could have more productivity, more growth, more jobs, more tax revenue etc etc. Also, the system is already providing healthcare to the uninsured in the form of the emergency room, which is by far the most expensive method.
On a different note, I just think that calling other people who comment here names is counterproductive and immature. You seem like a smart person with reasonable ideas and it is not necessary when we are all trying to have a civilized discussion.
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» on 02.22.10 @ 04:35 PM
“It would be great if we could stick to commenting on the article or comments and not direct an attack at the author.”
Only if YOU agree with the author right, local?
Hilarious hypocrisy coming from “local”. See Daniel Petry’s articles.
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» on 02.22.10 @ 05:01 PM
O.K. , AN50 my man , I have some reading for you to do . You will be needing some of your “free market” health coverage after you read this stuff cause it is just sickening . Search the ” Sick for Profit ” website . Click on the ” Insurance CEO’s ” page . Read the Steven Hemsley profile( CEO United Healthcare , largest U.S.provider), including the American Medical News link to the stock option fraud at the bottom of his profile . Oh ..... and AN50 , book report due tomorrow .
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» on 02.24.10 @ 10:34 AM
To Infomaniac and Local, my apologies for not being clear on that “entity”. I did not mean that the single entity, the US government, being so far in the hole that they now speak Chinese, was related to a “single payer system”. I thought it was clear that what I meant was, so far what has been broached as healthcare bills moves away from market solutions rather than toward them and the move away was toward an entity with a very bad track record of managing money.
Clearly, if supply and demand are responsible for prices in a free market AND you had a free market system in healthcare, THEN increasing the supply of healthcare should reduce demand and thus prices. Clearly we do not have a free market system anywhere in the US. Thus supply and demand are “tweaked” rather absurdly in order to make politicians look better on election day rather than for the express purpose of helping reduce costs. But, people as I have said many times before, ultimately, healthcare is a service and one that consumes rather than produces wealth. Therefore, to pay for health care and make it cheap, you need to produce the wealth in excess somewhere else in your economy. It is the same principle that made our federal highway program successful at the beginning. We had a net trade surplus and we as an economy produced more than we consumed. That allowed for higher tax rates without penalizing production and created a net surplus in revenue to the government. Since the sixties we stopped producing more than we consume, we started running massive trade deficits and we started penalizing both economically through taxes and legally through regulation every aspect of our producer economy until we have the little that we do today. No partisanship here people just common sense.
To answer your call Willie I don’t need to read any of that stuff because I already know greed and corruption exists in industry. How do I know, you ask? Because people work there. Willie you and your lefties really got to stop confusing a human behavior, like greed, with an economic system, like capitalism. Do you actually believe there is no greed, corruption, graft, theft, crime or immorality in a socialist economy? God, you guys cannot be that simpleminded, naïve or stupid (you pick). Every chance you get you point out that greed exist because of capitalism. That’s the same as saying murder exists because we have guns. And yes, even in gun less cultures you have murder, so don’t go there. Yes capitalism makes it easy to be greedy. But because of the inherent nature of the system, that greed is bloody damned obvious. Wanna know where greed ain’t so obvious? That’s right Willie, in government controlled economies. So spout off all you want about the greed in the insurance industries but if you got government regulations out of the way, and allow fierce competition to happen you could at least choose the greedy company you wanted to deal with instead of having the government tell you which to choose.
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» on 02.24.10 @ 05:29 PM
Wait , An Man , isn’t the anti trust exemption that health insurers operate under an example of government getting out of the way ? What has that gotten us? It has gotten us premiums rising 4 times faster than wages and escalating . Oh .... and your reluctance to spend 5 minutes reading up on Hemsly reveals a lot . You guys wank about taxes sucking the life out of you , yet no outrage at billions of dollars being ripped off workin folks backs by insurers .
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