Hullabaloo

Friday, May 18, 2012

 
The professional right

by digby

We can only dream of a "professional left" that is as influential and connected as this:

Thirty minutes.

That’s roughly the time it took for conservatives to jump all over Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his leadership team after the GOP’s game plan for dealing with President Barack Obama’s health care law leaked to the media.

Their gripe? Republicans would try to replicate popular parts of Obama’s health care law if the Supreme Court overturns the law this summer.

Rather than sending out news releases or rushing to cable TV for a rant, conservatives blasted House Republican leadership on a private Google email group called The Repeal Coalition. The group is chock- full of think tank types, some Republican leadership staffers, health care policy staffers and conservative activists, according to sources in the group.

The behind-the-scenes fight among Republicans richly illustrates why House GOP leadership is so cautious, sensitive and calculating when it comes to dealing with the conservative right. POLITICO obtained the email chain, the contents of which show that health care reform remains just as emotional an issue as ever.

Wesley Denton, an aide to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), questioned whether the “GOP now against full repeal?”

“Should we change the name of this [listserv] to ‘partialrepealcoalition’ or ‘someofobamacareisprettygood’?” Denton wrote to the group.

Brian Worth, a GOP leadership staffer responsible for coordinating with outside groups, shot back that “the House has already passed a full repeal bill.”

“Has the Senate passed that bill yet?” Worth asked Denton, in the email chain.

Russ Vought, a former House Republican staffer who is now at Heritage Action for America, bluntly said, “that has absolutely nothing to do with it.” The “House GOP is going to cave after winning an election on full repeal … and before winning the next election to finish the job.”

“Unreal,” he said.

It's undoubtedly true that the Republican base wants full repeal of Ohbaaaamacare. But it's far from clear that the voters as a whole agree. Of course, the perennial problem is that there isn't a critical mass of people who have or will benefit from the reforms since most people are covered by their employer and therefore have little stake in them (unless they lose their jobs or decide to go out on their own.) So, healthcare remains an abstract issue for many people --- perhaps even a majority who won't feel it if the reforms are repealed.

It's very hard to know how that would go, although I think they may be biting off more than they can chew if they go this far:

Avik Roy, a Forbes columnist and Manhattan Institute scholar, wrote to the email group that forcing insurance companies to cover folks with pre-existing conditions “would destroy the private insurance market.” Congressional Republicans also want to keep closed the Medicare “donut hole” — Washington-speak for a gap in Medicare’s prescription drug coverage that requires seniors to pay more out of pocket for medicine. Roy said that much-maligned gap in coverage — eventually closed in the Democrats’ law — has “actuarial importance in preventing wasteful drug spending.”

”Brian, if you or someone else can explain the policy rationale of these provisions, I’d love to hear it,” Roy wrote to the email list.

He's right that the pre-existing condition provision is problematic if they repeal the mandate. It's actuarially important to let these people die if they can't afford insurance. (There is a body of thought that says it isn't needed.) And the donut-hole does hold down government spending because it lays it on the backs of patients.

But good luck with the politics. They might be able to get away with eliminating the pre-existing condition coverage, because Americans seem to have become hardened to hard luck stories and frankly don't care enough about strangers to want to do anything about a problem that doesn't affect them directly. But the donut-hole will ignite the seniors, something the Republicans are loathe to do. It's become their voting base.

The "professional right" is nonetheless very effective:

It’s another turn of the screw for a Washington that is influenced by deep-pocketed, high-profile legislative-action groups. From Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform to Heritage Action to Club for Growth, these groups are frequent judges of Republican Washington and aren’t afraid to speak out against fellow conservatives.[...]

The speaker issued a statement Thursday to reaffirm his support for full repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

“The only way to change this is by repealing ObamaCare in its entirety,” Boehner said in the statement. “We voted to fully repeal the president’s health care law as one of our first acts as a new House majority, and our plan remains to repeal the law in its entirety. Anything short of that is unacceptable.”

Impressive.
digby 5/18/2012 10:00:00 AM