We haven't heard publicly from Michael Steele, Republican National Committee Chairman, in quite some time. That's not necessarily a bad thing! But now he's back at center stage (or trying to be), being loosed on an unsuspecting public by the GOP as a part of a new blitz to stop health care reform. Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, whose last public appearance giving the GOP's official response to President Obama's February 24 address to Congress thrust him into well-deserved oblivion for the past six months, is reportedly going to be part of the same effort.
I've remarked before on the bizarre attitude of the Republican Party in opposing all change in health care, an issue on which people overwhelmingly say they want reform. I leave it to the party to figure out whether that makes political sense or not, but it is interesting that the heavy artillery (Cheney? McCain? Limbaugh?) is being left in the shed for the effort, and the popguns like Jindal and Steele are being deployed for the opening salvos. It's possible the bigger guys do see some contradiction in too publicly opposing a popular effort.
Anyway, in an appearance at the National Press Club today, Steele made one thing abundantly clear: his party has no new ideas to offer. Fear? Not new, but of course they've got that: Steele called Democratic plans "reckless" and claimed we should all "be scared to death." (Wait, maybe that's something for the GOP to build a concept on: Dead people don't need health care, so why improve our system?)
The doughty RNC Chairman suggested that reform was proceeding in too much of a "rush." That's a familiar refrain; we know from the last administration, when Republicans controlled Congress for six years, that there was no rush about health care reform.
New solutions? Steele, perhaps forgetting who won the election, suggests we should scrap all those silly Democratic ideas, and instead "reduce medical malpractice lawsuits, make it easier for self-employed individuals to buy health insurance and encourage businesses to set up programs that reward employees who ... take ...measures to improve their health." These are old Republican suggestions; I doubt even most Republicans think they would be effective (but remember, Republicans oppose reform); but if they did, they ought to have enacted them in the Bush years, when the GOP could, if it wished to do anything about bringing change, have dictated the terms.
Regrettably - for themselves and perhaps for all of us too - the Republican Party seems bereft of solutions, continuing to trot out a handful of rinky-dink halfway measures while refusing to involve itself constructively at the legislative level, and not-so-secretly wishing the whole issue would go away.
Comments