Health Care Reform a Disaster – for the GOP

It got done.

Josh Marshall offers a perspective that I share here. Seven months in politics is a long time.

Bart Stupak, who held everything up in order to get stronger language against abortions, gets called a "baby killer" by a brave member of the Texas delegation who so far has declined to step forward and identify himself.*

David Frum, a conservative Republican, thinks the Health Care Reform bill was a disaster. For the Republicans. A taste here:

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%.

*Update: It was Rep. Randy Neugebauer of Texas, a co-sponsor of "birther" legislation. Neugebauer has apologized, and claims he said "It's a baby killer!", "it" being Obama's Executive Order on the subject – the same Executive Order that NOW is furious about.