Republicans cry wolf, now show us the wolf
For more than a year Republicans have been on message, collectively functioning as a political Nostradamus in predicting economic and social calamity in the wake of the health-care-reform package President Barack Obama and congressional leaders appear to have engineered.
Generally, the business of making political predictions is a safe one, because if you are wrong, what’s the fallout, really? Most of the columnists in 2007, who said Obama had no chance against Team Clinton, are still earning money on their self-purported clairvoyance. If they lost their jobs, it was more than likely because of news-business restructuring, not as a result of failing to see Obama’s political boil.
Republicans are not in the same position. They cried wolf on health care, and now the American people are going to have see the coarse fur and snarling teeth of the health-care beast the GOP has been telling us is lurking in the woods, ready to spring into our homes and businesses and turn American life into a Big Red Ride.
This reform is so sweeping that individuals and businesses will in coming years determine the merits or it for themselves. They won’t need politicians to tell them. The pluses and minuses will emerge in hospital stays and checkbook ledgers. In other words, it is now real.
Here are some things we know based on an exhaustive review of health-care reform by The New York Times:
• 32 million people who don’t have coverage will have opportunities for it.
• Children with pre-existing conditions can’t be shut out.
• Lifetime limits on coverage? Gone.
• More low- to moderate-income Americans under 65 can access Medicaid.
• Children 26 and under, dependents who are finishing school or starting careers, could remain under their parents plans.
These are specific measures that will have tangible effects on the lives of millions.
As long as the Senate doesn’t go off the reservation with what the House passed Sunday night, the White House and Democrats will have these accomplishments and others to stack up against Republican predictions.
That’s a dramatic change in dynamics, and it places Obama on the offensive again. ...
In covering U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, one starts to empathize with the teleplay writers for the popular sitcom “Cheers.”
At some point most each week in scripting the show, now in syndication, the writers were required to insert the following line, “Norm orders a beer.”
With King it is: “Iowa congressman makes outlandish or embarrassing statement.”
As tired as it gets, “Cheers” doesn’t work without Norm and that beer, and you can’t get around the outrageous remarks with King, as old hat as it may be. Last week, we devoted a full Cityview cover story to the provocative King.
Only a short time after the ink was dry and the Web link set on that story, we got another Kingism as he dismissed the racial slurs and spitting venerable African-American politicians, Congressmen John Lewis and Emmanuel Cleaver, endured at the hands of Tea Party protesters.
“I just don’t think it’s anything,” King told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, emphasizing that the incidents were isolated. “There are a lot of places in this country that I couldn’t walk through. I wouldn’t live to get to the other end of it.” ...
Don’t dismiss State Rep. Rod Roberts’ bid for governor so quickly.
A prominent Iowa pol suggested I quit spilling ink on the Carroll Republican. It’s all about that money — and Roberts (with about $100,000 raised as of last filing period) doesn’t have the war chest for real combat, goes the conventional wisdom. Fair enough.
Roberts is now officially out of the race for the House District 51 seat that he’s held a stranglehold on for a 10 years. He’s completely focused on the Republican primary for governor and a series of debates set to begin April 7 in Sioux City.
“I’m all in,” Roberts said. “The risk is well worth the taking.”
Roberts is the least known of the three candidates now seeking the Republican nomination for a run at Democratic Gov. Chet Culver. He also has the smallest geographic base from which to launch his campaign.
Even so, Roberts, who has been traveling the state since last summer, said there’s a hungering among GOP primary voters for a third option, a new voice.
“You’re 52 years old and the opportunity comes along,” Roberts said. “There are just too many interesting dynamics among the electorate to rule out a surprise candidate doing well.” CV
Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa newspaperman who writes for The Carroll Daily Times Herald and offers columns for Cityview.
