Health Care Postscript
There's been some discussion on liberal blogs lately about the true meaning of the recent health care reform victory that has reflected some of my own thoughts. It is a great progressive acheivement, and yet the legislation itself is pointedly centrist, even Republican. This has struck me as quite a contradiction. But over at Jon Chait's blog , a commenter known as 'Virginia Centrist' has articulated an accurate dissection of this idea: I think the answer here is that this isn't really an ideal moderate Republican plan. It's a plan that a few moderate Republicans have proposed before...but they only proposed it as an alternative to an incredibly liberal plan. Very few moderate Republicans have fought for a plan like this or even supported one. Their support was nominal. The exception was Mitt Romney...but even he was working with a huge liberal Democratic majority (8-1 in one legislature). In a vacuum, would any Republican actually seriously push for this pla...