With the failure of yet another Republican healthcare bill, the GOP finds itself in disarray. After eight years of clarion call opposition to President Barack Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment, the Republican Party has repeatedly fumbled a hard-won opportunity to erase it from the books.
As party officials, the Trump administration, pundits, and voters turn on one another and search for scapegoats, one question lingers: How did Democrats pull this off?
At the time of its passage, Obamacare was backed by similar legislative and executive strengths, including House and Senate majorities (albeit a stronger one in the Senate than President Trump inherited). And though it’s easy to get lost in Congressional Budget Office scores regarding the federal deficit and the number of people with health insurance coverage, there’s a more overarching political concept at work that may continue to plague Republicans in the Trump era.
Simply put, Democrats have a major advantage when it comes to policymaking.
Government programs are costly. They need to be staffed and administered. In the rare examples where they function somewhat efficiently, right-leaning voters and politicians still question whether given programs do more harm than good. For those who often cling to the mantra that “taxation is theft,” even the most well-intentioned programs appear like crime in plain sight.
Democrats and liberals, on the other hand, take a different view of government’s role. For every problem, there’s a program. For every inequity, there’s an intervention. The ceilings are higher because very few, if any, Democrats pay lip service to fiscal responsibility the way their Republican counterparts do. The goal is a larger, more involved government. In the case of healthcare, it’s government that by any means necessary ensures everyone has coverage of some sort.
The upshot of this policymaking imbalance is that Republican proposals are inevitably viewed as the erosion of the social contract. A tax cut becomes a “gift” to the rich; the removal of onerous regulations compelling the few to pay for the healthcare of the many is put on par with murder and genocide.
In its years as an opposition party in the Obama era, Republicans made hay by shining a spotlight on the flaws in the massive federal apparatus. In 2017, the party of small and limited government has gotten lost inside of it.
Trumpcare failed because the party that put it together forgot the purpose of its drafting. Medicaid’s rolls have exploded because so few Americans have affordable health insurance options. The party that champions the free market had multiple chances to let loose one that’s been bound up for seven years.
Instead, by obsessing over retaining the best parts of a bad piece of legislation, the message that gave the GOP its strongest majorities in nearly a century died in debate before it reached the Senate floor.
Tamer Abouras (@iamtamerabouras) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a writer and editor from Williamstown, N.J.
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