Monday, July 27, 2009

Re: The Lesson of Clinton   [Jonah Goldberg]

Rich — I think you have it exactly right. But I don't think you even have to go back to Clinton. Just go back to the stimulus bill. It seems to me that the conventional wisdom among Republican strategists and folks on the Hill — at least among those I talked to or read — was that Obama could have done lasting damage to the GOP if he'd only been willing to co-opt Republicans with some tax cuts and other Republican or centrist sops. That would have made it very hard for Republicans to run against Obama in 2010, at least with the stimulus as an issue. Instead, he handed the whole thing to Democratic bulls. Now, the stimulus bill looks like a failure and a cravenly political pay-off to Democratic interest groups and ideologues (who now complain it was too small) and Republicans have it as a useful issue.

The healthcare bill looks more and more like a stimulus bill redux. Obama seems to feel he must placate the Democratic party's base more than win Republicans which would give him centrist cover. Indeed, much like the stimulus bill (and almost everything else on his domestic agenda), he thinks he can go left while merely saying he's being centrist or bipartisan. That schtick worked in the campaign, but it doesn't work so well now. And Blue Dog Democrats in particular understand that owning Obamacare in 2010 is not a winning posture, in no small part because they already have to defend the stimulus bill.

07/27 06:11 PMShare