The GOP's Medicare Nightmare

By the time polls close tonight in New York's 26th Congressional district we may have a better sense of just how badly House Republicans may have wounded the party by voting for Rep. Paul Ryan's budget which among other things savages Medicare and opened the door for allegations that the GOP was "throwing" grandma over the cliff." It's not as if the Congressional Republicans didn't have warnings as to the possible consequences of appeasing the Tea Party crowd and House freshman. They just chose - with typical GOP arrogance and a desire to claim a mandate where none existed - to ignore them and threw down a gauntlet which may now hopefully be used to beat them severely about the head and at the ballot box. Politico has a piece that looks at the many warnings that were available. The Washington Post has a column that looks at the GOP's self-inflicted wound in additional detail. First, this highlight from Politico:
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It might be a political time bomb — that’s what GOP pollsters warned as House Republicans prepared for the April 15 vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, with its plan to dramatically remake Medicare.
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No matter how favorably pollsters with the Tarrance Group or other firms spun the bill in their pitch — casting it as the only path to saving the beloved health entitlement for seniors — the Ryan budget’s approval rating barely budged above the high 30s or its disapproval below 50 percent, according to a Republican operative familiar with the presentation.
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GOP pollsters, political consultants and House and NRCC staffers vividly reminded leadership that their members were being forced to walk the plank for a piece of quixotic legislation. They described for leadership the horrors that might be visited on the party during the next campaign, comparing it time and again with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to ram through a cap-and-trade bill despite the risks it posed to Democratic incumbents.
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“The tea party itch has definitely not been scratched, so the voices who were saying, ‘Let’s do this in a way that’s politically survivable,’ got drowned out by a kind of panic,” a top GOP consultant involved in the debate said, on condition of anonymity.
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In the Washington Post column, Eugene Robinson looks at the problems now flowing from the GOP's act of hubris. Here are highlights:
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Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the architect of his party’s radical plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program, gave a lesson Sunday in stating the obvious: “I don’t consult polls to tell me what my principles are or what our policies should be.” I’d suggest that Republicans with less disdain for public opinion might want to check out the height of the cliff from which Ryan would have them leap.
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What concentrates the minds of GOP strategists and candidates — or ought to — is the spectacle unfolding in New York’s 26th Congressional District near Buffalo. It’s a solid Republican constituency, one that Chris Lee won last year with 74 percent of the vote. Alas, Lee resigned after a Web site published a bare-chested beefcake photo he had sent to a woman he met through Craigslist.
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What should worry Republicans is that the biggest issue in the campaign — practically the only issue — is Ryan’s Medicare plan. Corwin supports it, Hochul opposes it, and the GOP may well lose a race that shouldn’t even be close.
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Is the Medicare issue really that toxic? Newt Gingrich clearly thought it was, or else he’d never have called it “right-wing social engineering” and gotten himself in such trouble with his fellow Republicans. Even now, after a week of rhetorical beat-downs from GOP opinion-makers and busy signals from big-time donors, he’s still trying to find a way to support the Ryan plan while leaving some sure-to-be-needed wiggle room.
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Many Republicans, sensibly, are eager to change the subject. This would be tough to do under any circumstances, given that the party has made the deficit its central issue. Moving along will be much harder with Democrats doing everything they can to keep the Ryan plan in the news — and with Ryan and other true believers still convinced that giving vouchers to senior citizens, putting them at the mercy of the private health insurance market, is a dandy idea that surely will catch on.
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It won’t. Americans oppose Medicare cuts by overwhelming margins.
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Obviously, I am hoping that the GOP's growing extremism will be its undoing. Making pacts with the Devil - e.g., the Tea Party and the Christian Taliban - needs to be made to carry a high cost.