Great post, Steve. This is a benefit the passage of the bill allows: Republicans will now, hopefully, have to answer SPECIFIC questions about provisions contained there. Their only recourse is to say that they are against HCR, period. Let's hope reporters dig into the issues with them and that come election time this sticks.

All I've heard from them recently is, We can't afford it.

Funny how most of the rest of the world can.

Basically, they're telling Americans they think we're too stupid and/or incompetent to accomplish what the rest of the world accomplished decades ago.

Palin 2012: Our Long National Nightmare of Affordable Health Care Is Finally Over!

h/t Onion
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784

The Republican meme for the next three years: "(Political) Death to the Black Man."

They have withered to being a largely southern white party, and the senate is mostly old, OLD, white men. (With a touch of Strom Thurmond in their jeans, er, genes. . .)

Steve Benen quoted Josh Marshall: "But it's worth noting once again that the Republican opposition on this whole issue is a sham."

Of course the Republican opposition is a sham.

The Republicans have simply been playing "bad cop" to the Democrats' "good cop" as they browbeat the American people into accepting the "plea deal" that the district attorney (the insurance corporations) is willing to offer.

The insurance companies got everything they wanted in the Senate bill -- and they got all of it from the Senate Democrats.

They didn't need the Republicans for that. They just need the Republicans to put on a big show of opposition so this bill can be touted as a victory for partisan Democrats and "sensible" (i.e. corporatist) "liberals".

And the Republicans are happy to play along, since the charade helps them with their Ditto-Head Palin worshipping base, who they are still counting on to help them regain power in 2010 and 2012.

And when the Republicans regain power -- particularly if they regain control of the Executive Branch -- they won't need to legislatively roll back this "reform". They will be in a position to use the very mechanisms that the Senate bill creates, to enrich the insurance corporations at the public's expense.

Steve, I love your enthusisam that the Republicans will be forced to actually defend their positions, but I suspect they'll focus group it to find some small portion of any aspect of the final bill someone doesn't like, then have their owners spend billions to saturate the airwaves with someone who didn't get every service they wanted. (But didn't need)

The nut-job base will respond by screaming that Obamacare is killing them and the media will take whatever their talking points handout says as literal truth and the Republicans will just say "See we tried to stop all that"

It won't end the HCR program, but every attempt to improve it will be met with the "Can't allow change, it will kill grandma" response.

It is cynical, but we've aeen it too many times to think it won't happen.

Enjoy your Holidays and time with friends and family.

Oh please. Tell me there is video of this interview. It will be exhibit A for the Democrats to use in their campaign ads. I hope someone can find a link to this.

"'Technically it could be peeled back if the circumstances were right,' Crapo said during an appearance on a conservative news radio syndicate. 'But we would have to have a president who would sign such a bill, and we would have to have 60 votes in the Senate -- not just 50'."

Nope.

They could repeal ANY part of the legislation with 50 votes.

My guess is that's once it's passed we'll see Republicans from congress go back to their states and districts and claim credit for passing healthcare reform...we've seen that before, haven't we?

I do believe the GOP may have just arrived at their Waterloo.

Crapo? Talk about suitable names! Perhaps his entire world view was determined by playground teasing.

Crapo? Seriously? I'd change my name, especially if I was going into politics.

I think the chances of repeal of a great deal of the legislation is somewhat higher, for the reasons I've stated already, though one hopes that the subsidies and money for, say, clinics continue and are left untouched, as those would be politically radioactive.

It is comical because in this instance they can't hide, simply by spinning it, what they are really all about.

They *know* what kind of victory this is for Obama and the Dems. They knew that if they could bring it down their chances in 2010 go way up. Its was always a pure political calculation.

Problem is none of them was smart enough to realize how much *real* support they would gain from constituents if they jumped on board.

They are beholden to the boorish Tea Baggers now. Its fun to watch them twist.

"All I've heard from them recently is, We can't afford it.
Funny how most of the rest of the world can."

The rest of the world by and large uses something akin to the public option, single payer, or a government run heath care. This bill on the other hand keeps the private insurers in place, entrenches and enriches them massively. Nobody else is that stupid. The Swiss use a system that includes private insurers but they are massively and strictly regulated and the Swiss still have the second most expensive system after us, as I recall.

Senate dems chose the worst of all worlds, and yeah I don;t see the republicans having a problem finding that a target rich environment. The Senate Dems decided to provoke a fight with the base (or at least with the left wing of the base) and that's unbelievably stupid given that the one advantage dems had going into next year was that the GOP was fighting with it's base.

The handling of healthcare has been feckless and idiotic and the dems deserve the damage they've done to themselves. We don't deserve the damage they've done, and are going to do, to us and to the idea of reform.

Ladyhawke - Sen. Hatch was on MSMBC this morning and it was Contessa Brewer that asked him twice what was it that was in the bill that he could agree with. He never gave a real anwser to her question. Just more BS. The question that I would like the GnOP to anwser is "When the GnOP presented its health bill where was the 80% that they said they agree with in the Dems bill ?"

"They *know* what kind of victory this is for Obama and the Dems."

I bet they do. What's that word for a victory that's not worth the cost? One that's a victory in name only and is really a loss?

Oh yeah. "Pyrrhic."

"The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits"

Yeah it does seem like exactly that kind of victory. Cheerleader exhortations aside.

"It's not going anywhere" - yeah ... but that's what most of us are worried too, in a different sense.

"reactionary"

There's that word again. I'll never understand why it fell out of favor. Calling reactionary Republicans *conservatives* dignifies them beyond their worth. They're just a bunch of witless reactionaries.

You see, it's not pronounced "Crap-oh" it's "cray-po." Kinda like Boner's name is actually pronounced "baner."

You know, the more I read about it, the more convinced I am that the pessimism amongst Republicans and the optimism amongst Democrats is misplaced. Here's a poll quoted by Glenn Greenwald today:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1408

Essentially the only parts of the bill that the public actually supports are the ones that were dropped. The overwhelming consensus is that the public wants the government to create a non-profit Health Insurance company to compete with the commercial insurers, and/or to expand Medicare. They don't want the mandate, subsidies, or the majority of other aspects of this bill.

The public has, by and large, been interested in the pros and cons of a British-style NHS vs the status quo, and neither wanted nor were interested in the rather peculiar Rube Goldberg thing that emerged that's not really like either. The bill made sense to the wonks, because the Washington establishment are obsessed with free markets and limited government. But it didn't make sense outside of Washington.

I'm finding it increasingly hard to believe the public is going to be attached to the majority of provisions in the bill. To the contrary, I think there will be call for much of it to be repealed. The subsidies may end up staying, but I suspect that unless there's a successful attempt to put a public option or something similar in the bill before it becomes law, then an incoming Republican congress will have no problems at all rolling back the mandate, even at the expense of also rolling back the rules against restrictions on pre-existing conditions.

If you doubt that, if you think the Republicans would never roll back laws aimed at unscrupulous, damaging, behavior that the poorest can least afford, you haven't been awake for the last fifteen years.

If the Republicans gain the executive and both Houses again, how long do you think they'll allow the filibuster to remain? We'll see reactionary not seen since Czar Nicolas I in December 1825.

Why should the Republicans want to repeal the Senate bill? It's exactly what they wanted - a massive handout to health care companies.

But they will block real reform. (So will the Democrats.)

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