Enraged Elephants

Despite the conservative offensive, Obama was successful in getting historic legislation through Congress. Among Republicans, outrage is mixed with self-criticism — and rightly so.

Naturally, America’s conservatives have overreacted once again: “It is the biggest abuse of power and demonstration of arrogance ever shown by Washington,” a female Fox News commentator wrote in her assessment of a law that not just a few people consider historic.

A majority in the House of Representatives approved the Senate changes to President Obama’s most important initiative, health care reform legislation. Congress hasn’t passed a more significant piece of social legislation since the 1960s. Obama is expected to sign the law next Tuesday. Many see the writing on the wall: Obama’s first legislative session is already a success. He has made history.

But into the history books will also go the last fourteen months, during which Americans were witness to an unprecedented battle. Compared to the populist propaganda attacks launched by conservatives in and around America’s Tea Party movement, our little verbal skirmishes between coalition partners in the Berlin government look almost like peace talks. Republicans now attack the reforms like a herd of enraged elephants (in line with their party’s mascot) gone off the deep end.

Obama the tyrant, opposing the will of the people; the socialist who wants to turn America into a communist country. There were no comparisons so crude that opponents of health care reform wouldn’t stoop to using to demonize Democrats and their reform initiative. Right up to the actual vote, Republican representatives agitated against it; now that it’s been passed, their opposition continues. At least ten states, some with Democratic governors, now plan to challenge the new law in court.

The Republican goal has always been to bring down Obama’s most important domestic program, to expose the president who promised change as a dreamer and the Democrats as inefficient gasbags. These have been the Republican goals for over a year, ever since they decided to set up monolithic opposition to health care reform.

The shrill Tea Party movement had a lot of success, and representatives got a taste of their displeasure in town hall meetings. But in the end, mobilizing their rage didn’t work. The bill was signed into law and thereby became a huge problem for Republicans: What happens if people start realizing over time that all the sky-is-falling rhetoric used by the conservatives hasn’t come true? What happens if America doesn’t magically change into communist China as promised? What happens if more Americans get healthy and stay that way?

In their rage over having lost the fight, conservatives are also displaying self-criticism. Republicans may take consolation in the fact that they’ve laid the foundation for a return to congressional power in November’s election insofar as they will use opposition to reform as a plank in their election platform. But David Frum, well-known conservative journalist and ex-adviser to George W. Bush, thinks these conservatives have succeeded only in bringing on the “most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.”

Sure, the hyper-heated debate mobilized people on the one hand, but that’s been counterbalanced by the fact that Republicans have now lost a good deal of maneuvering room. How are conservative representatives in Congress now supposed to present their own, improved alternatives now that they’ve condemned reform to the status of Satan’s handiwork? “We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat,” Frum laments.

Conservatives have surrendered leadership to the opinion-makers on radio and television. “So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry,” Frum says, referring to commentators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. “Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed,” Frum added, saying they would now be tuning in to them in greater numbers.

What might become even more worrisome for Republicans is that fact that Obama may be able to demonstrate to Americans just how serious he is about his promise for change. He can no longer be accused of being all talk and no action. In the days leading up to the House vote, his complete attention was focused on reform. He canceled planned trips to Australia and Indonesia on short notice. He set an example; the chance he took in reverting to campaign mode in many speeches paid off.

An adviser to the Democrats summed it up for Politico.com saying, “Every Democrat and lots of independents are going to be saying, ‘Oh shit! This Obama thing was for real. He really did what he said he was going to do.’ The political value of that is incalculable.”

The more Republicans try to demonize the new law in the run-up to the November elections, the more they will come off looking like sore losers. It’s also doubtful that public anger over the law will last that long — especially if the apocalyptic prediction from Republicans that it will spell the end of the United States doesn’t materialize. If the economic picture begins to brighten at all, anger against the Obama administration will be short-lived. Many say conservative opposition will start collapsing as soon as people start seeing their health care situation improving. The stubborn patriots Republicans depicted themselves as could soon start looking like mere naysayers.

But there is one promise Obama won’t be able to keep. When he entered the White House, he promised to govern in a bipartisan fashion. He can’t do that with these conservatives. House Minority Leader John Boehner threw a challenge at Democrats on the floor of the House when, in the heat of the health care debate, he shouted, “Hell, no, you can’t!”

But they indeed can. And in the future they will — in the complete absence of Republican help.