Rove's World

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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
August 30, 2009

By Bill Kraus

The people in charge of what remains of the Republican Party insist that they realize that as long as the party’s agenda is dominated and characterized by social issues it will not win elections. The misguided wedge era is at an end. It is time to get back to the basics of frugality, competence, and regulation-lite. Or so they say.

Their entrepreneurial candidates have not all seen the light, however.

Scott Walker, who has the most money and a head start on the GOP nomination for governor, has sent out a mailing insisting that he is the MOST pro-life candidate.

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has decided that his re-election candidacy will be enhanced by not doing what he was elected to do and instead is flirting with being afflicted by the kind of homophobia that is being rejected in "radical" states like Iowa and by "left wing" Republicans like Ted Olson.

And no incumbent in Congress from our state has picked up where Tommy left off on trying to get a handle on the economy/job-killing cost of our employer-based health care system. To elaborate: At one time when he was serving as Secretary of the Health and Human Services in the Bush administration, Tommy proposed a crash program to computerize the health care records of everyone in the country in 18 months. Karl Rove, the illegitimate father of wedge politics, nixed the plan. The Republican’s willingness to fix high-cost-mediocre-results health care has gone downhill from there.

The free-market ideologues in our state Legislature do not hear the GOP state chairman when he tells them that the party is losing the campaign funding battle because too many Republicans are afraid to support the kind of modest public funding that would level the fiscal playing field. Stupid.

Until and unless the Republican Party rejects the partisanization of abortion rights, civil unions, and even gun control in urban areas, and gets back to frugal fixing of the public sector operations its main contribution to elective politics will be to enhance the candidacy of unpopular Democrats who will keep the Republican radicals at bay.

The thing that made Jim Doyle unbeatable was his veto pen not his programs or his personal charm.

So the only hope for the Republicans seems to be the Democrats’ likely hubris.

One of the truest truisms of politics is that we know how to handle defeat better than victory.

I would much prefer to see the Republicans base their campaign to regain power on a return to their traditional strengths instead of waiting for their opponents to go too far with theirs.


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The status quo and the people who love it

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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
August 24, 2009

By Bill Kraus

Thirty one years ago Bill Safire of the NY Times wrote an Election Day column in which he said, “[The] wrong-headed rejection of political labels--the glorification of non-participation--is at the root of the rise of single-issue voting which bids fair to make this year’s election more of a battle between local extremist groups than a referendum on the nation’s case of hardening arteries.”

At the time, the forces of the status quo were re-directing the money, which was and still is the mother’s milk of politics, from the political parties to the proliferating and rapidly rising single-issue groups.

Without money the parties lost their power to recruit and slate candidates, and a diverse collection of entrepreneurial candidates picked up a party banner that most suited them and we entered the abominable era of wedge politics.

As we quickly learned, money that once went to the parties’ coffers began to flow disproportionately to protecting the status quo. This should have been expected inasmuch as those with money usually got it from the existing conditions and situation, which is the definition of "status quo."

Instead of representatives legislating for the benefit of the people they represent and the nation, state or districts from which they came, they became more and more beholden to the money and the issues and the interests and the causes that they believe got them there in the first place and whose money and votes they needed to stay in office.

Among the unfortunate events that beset our current president, the full flowering of the Safire prediction may be the most intractable.

It is on full display in the battle by the interests and their money to NOT change the way health care is delivered and paid for in this country.


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Talking around the problem

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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
August 16, 2009

By Bill Kraus

A recent e-mail message from a long time liberal Republican whose campaign for a U.S. Senate seat was derailed in the primary by someone who was passionately anti-abortion reminded me of the dangers of over-simplifying complex issues.

It wasn't that long ago that no one would have heard of my friend’s contention that this wasn’t about people who were pro-life versus those who were--what?--pro-death. This was about who would get to choose a hateful procedure, whether that procedure would be lawful, and, if not, what the punishment would be for those who provided and requested it.

The current e-mail was also about another even more complex question and, unconscionably, included a joke about an "Obama Sandwich"--the person who orders it gets to eat it and someone else pays for it--which is this political season’s victim of an attempt to over-simplify to a slogan, phrase, joke.

To some extent I fault the administration for letting the discussion about reform be about medical welfare for the over-publicized 40 million instead of about high medical costs and mediocre medical results.

The fact that my correspondent devoted most of his e-mail to railing against the young, cavalier, cheap, or maybe just stupid part of the 40 million who will unjustifiably benefit from the proposed reform indicates that Obama’s attempt to change the subject and the debate has not yet registered.

The 40 million are a small part of the problem. Bringing them into the mainstream may even be a part of the cost solution.

The main reason for reform is that the U.S. cannot compete in a flat world economy until and unless our grossly inefficient and relatively ineffective way of delivering health care is brought into line. The old saw about GM--”Their Blue Cross bill is higher than their steel bill”--afflicts everyone and everything everyone makes.

The insurance/employer-based system is, in effect, killing our ability to compete.

That’s the problem.

It’s not who will benefit from the fix.

It’s not who will decide how much to pay for what procedure for which patient.

It’s not about denying treatment or downgrading a not-that-great health care delivery system.

It’s about surviving in a world economy where our competitors are getting better health care results for half the money.

Let’s figure out how to do that.

Let’s quit with the slogans, the one liners, the jokes, and the shouting, and get to work on the problem.


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