Waterloo

One of the striking things about the modern conservative movement is how un-introspective it is. In the movement’s own telling, it never made a mistake, either tactical or substantive. Even Barry Goldwater’s politically dismal and morally repugnant 1964 campaign was somehow the right thing to do. And every step of the way since then, the right has been right right right.

So it’s left to me to concern-troll in my piece for The Daily Beast:

We should also, however, spare a thought for the unsung hero of comprehensive reform, McConnell and his GOP colleagues, who pushed their “no compromise” strategy to the breaking point and beyond. The theory was that non-cooperation would stress the Democratic coalition and cause the public to begin to question the enterprise. And it largely worked. But at crucial times when wavering Democrats were eager for a lifeline, the Republicans absolutely refused to throw one. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and other key players at various points wanted to scale aspirations down to a few regulatory tweaks and some expansion of health care for children. This idea had a lot of appeal to many in the party. But it always suffered from a fatal flaw—the Republicans’ attitude made it seem that a smaller bill was no more feasible than a big bill. Consequently, even though Scott Brown’s victory blew the Democrats off track, the basic logic of the situation pushed them back on course to universal health care.

Today, conservative anger at the Democrats is running higher than ever, and for the first time in years the GOP leadership’s blanket opposition has won them the esteem of their fanatics. But in more sober moments in the weeks and months to come, my guess is that the brighter minds on the right will recognize that their determination to turn health reform into Obama’s Waterloo sowed the seeds of their own destruction. Universal health care has been attempted many times in the past and always failed. The prospects for success were never all that bright. Many of us, myself included, at one point or another wanted to try something more moderate. But the right wing, by invariably indicating that it would settle for nothing less than total victory, inspired progressive forces to march on and win their greatest legislative victory in decades.

Of course the idea of “brighter minds” on the right are sometimes hard to find, especially since a lot of them are ambitious and tend to go into hiding or dream up byzantine reasons to agree with the party line at times of stress. But David Frum is largely on board with my interpretation, though I think he in many ways goes too far. Frum’s point is that if conservatives had been willing to engage constructively in the negotiations on the big enchilada, they could have gotten a more conservative version of universal health care. After all, Max Baucus wanted conservatives to engage constructively in the negotiations and all signs are that he wanted a more conservative bill.

My point is even more basic—at a couple of moments along this race the conservatives won the argument and Democrats were ready to buckle. Credit for not buckling goes to Nancy Pelosi and other gutsy leaders. But it also goes to the GOP. They wouldn’t take “yes” for an answer when lots of people wanted to surrender and settle for something much smaller. Instead, whipped up into a frenzy of ideological fanaticism and overconfidence, they decided to take no prisoners. So nobody surrendered! And that’s how Mitch McConnell brought universal health care to America. And the thing of it is that most conservatives are so shallow, and so driven by hippie-hatred rather than any real views, that if they get to use this as an “issue” to win seats in the midterms and it never gets repealed, they’ll consider themselves vindicated.

But all that Max Weber stuff I used to quote at public option dead-enders also applies to the other side. The point of politics is to do stuff, not to vent your feelings of self-righteous outrage about “socialism.” By choosing the path of self-righteousness, the right-wing delivered a victory that progressives never would have been able to win on our own. And it’s a victory that’s no more likely to be repealed than Social Security, Medicare, Civil Rights or any of the other signature achievements of modern American liberalism.