Steven Taylor of OTB asks the most important political question of the season:
To wit, a question: how likely is the (Ryan) plan to pass the House? (Heck, will it even come to a floor vote?) In other words: all the rhetoric of superlatives aside, are Republicans in the House willing to pass the plan?
I don’t know the answer, but I do know this: the Village has unwittingly set a trap for Republicans here. WaPo/Bobo/Klein/Sully’s praise for the Ryan monstrosity may be sweet and nice, but that won’t keep you warm at night in November 2012 if you’re a Republican Congressman who voted to abolish Medicare.
Oldsters vote and they watch a lot of tv too. If you’re a Republican in a swing district and you let your voting record make the election a referendum on the abolition of Medicare, you’re in a bad way. You want the Matlock crowd hot and bothered about gay marriage or Sharia law, not worried about the fact that you want to cut their health care.
If these idiots pass this thing — which will die in the Senate, my guess is that outside of Rand Ryan and a few other loons, no one there touch will touch this thing — it will cost them ten seats all by itself.
Spaghetti Lee
Teabaggers have a complete lack of self-awareness and won’t let a little thing like public opinion stop them. Opposition, if any, will come from the old guard, who never caught onto this new craziness like the whippersnappers did.
emrventures
Yeah, but the real question is how many oldsters, being fully protected under the Ryan plan, will vote to deprive those under 55 what they themselves have or will have. I suspect the answer is enough to shiver the timbers in the GOP establishment.
Not as high a percentage as those oldsters who don’t want their current Medicare touched, but higher than the cynical view the GOP has taken that the oldsters will sell out those who come after.
I hope and think there’s more decency left than the cynicism that blog-reading can one believe to be true.
mr. whipple
Which is why they must press forward with this most excellent, brave, bold, wise plan.
Just Some Fuckhead
The problem here is that they aren’t actually gonna touch Medicare for the folks who could endanger their political survival.
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, come on now. The cretins who are the Teatards don’t think that Medicare is a government program. “Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare!” more than one of these twits has said. These people ride around in fucking Medicare paid for scooters, for the love of Marx. They can’t make the connection.
Hunter Gathers
Greg Sargent says the vote is tommorrow. And yes, they are this fucking stupid.
jrg
You’d have to be a complete moron to believe that if Medicare is replaced with vouchers for the under 55 crowd, that wouldn’t form enough voter resentment to yank Medicare from the over 55 crowd, as well.
Judas Escargot
Yes and yes.
And both experiences are very, very well-managed for them.
Villago Delenda Est
Of course the real problem for the Rethugs is that the non-Teatard seniors will savage them in a nanosecond over this.
So they are screwed.
Punchy
Old people dont give a fuck, cuz everyone over 55 is grandfathered in, pun intended. So unless they’re voting for their grandkids, they aint changing parties b/c of this.
cleek
NPR’s congressional correspondent has been practically giddy about how badly the Ryan plan hurts the GOP.
someone get O’Keefe his $50K so he can get to work entrapping her in a back-alley behind a black-market dildo store in a Muslim neighborhood.
Just Some Fuckhead
@jrg:
Yeah, sounds like the usual victory lap prior to any actual political benefit.
b-psycho
@jrg: After all, that’s how sentiment against gov’t worker unions got as much traction as it did: private-sector workers lost their stuff first.
Jay C
So I think that is what they’re going to go for: push the “Ryan Plan” through for show; crow for the weekend TV yakfests about how “serious” they are about fiscal matters; then let the sick thing die (in the Senate, Obama’s wastebasket – anywhere); shift the blame onto somebody else (the Senate, the media, Bo the Dog – anybody), and go back to their usual circus of gay-bashing, union-busting, birtherism and Shariah-fighting to distract the Teabag mouth-breathers and, they hope, the press, from their EPIC FAIL.
PeakVT
AARP has come out against the Ryan demolition plan. Not sure if that will sway all the old people who are worried about the scourge of Islamofascist soçialism, but at least they’re making the statement.
Randy Swain
Appreciate the Burrito Brothers reference, Doug.
Mark S.
@Hunter Gathers:
Wow. I guess there’s no need for further study or deliberation. What fucking idiots.
rikyrah
hell yeah, I want them to cast a vote for it…on the record…hang it all on their necks.
Elia Isquire
To give him credit, though, it’s not the village that set this trap so much as the President. I could bother explaining it here but blogwhoring is easier. The short version is that Obama played rope-a-dope (again) on them on this one, and I’m honestly totally surprised that they fell for it.
For all the talk on our side (from some and only sometimes) of the GOP being Machiavellian geniuses or w/e they’re really just about as incompetent as the Dems are. Everyone sucks at this. It’s hard ‘n’ stuff.
jrg
@Punchy: You may be right. Reading the wingnuts on the AARP blog that PeakVT linked to does not leave me with much hope.
Count me in with those who will vote for a politician that will eliminate medicare for those > 55 if it’s not going to be there for me.
A reasonable discussion cannot be had with someone who would take my money to pay for their medical care, then call me a socialist. Fuck that.
jrg
@Punchy: You may be right. Reading the wingnuts on the AARP blog that PeakVT linked to does not leave me with much hope.
Count me in with those who will vote for a politician that will eliminate medicare for those > 55 if it’s not going to be there for me.
A reasonable discussion cannot be had with someone who would take my money to pay for their medical care, then call me a soc1alist. Fuck that.
Dennis SGMM
Oh shit, how hard is this for people to understand? Once the over 55’s are cut out from the herd the GOP will begin vilifying them just as they did the state workers after they cut them out of the herd. The under-55’s will then demand that the Other should be deprived of something that they aren’t getting. It’s not divide and conquer, it’s divide and fuck over yet there are still people who vote for these cynical cretins.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elia Isquire:They aren’t Machiavellian geniuses; they simply are very focused, without a sense of shame, and willing to to be utterly unthinking in pursuit of their goals.
Mark
@Punchy: I can’t see any old people voting for their grandchildren. If they did, we’d have single-payer universal health care for their grandchildren already.
jrg
@Dennis SGMM:
In the event that the promise of Medicare disappeared for me, I would.
The antidote for “fuck you, I’ve got mine” is to screw everyone over. Does anyone honestly believe that right-wing, “death panel”/ghey/darkie bullshit would scare seniors who can’t afford so much as an aspirin? Divide, divide, divide will only go so far before there’s a nasty populist left backlash.
James Gary
WaPo/Bobo/Klein/Sully’s praise for the Ryan monstrosity may be sweet and nice, but that won’t keep you warm at night
Gram Parsons reference duly noted. :)
Martin
Oh, it’ll pass. There’s a base to motivate, and anyone 55 and older is exempt. They’ll pass it and not look back.
Martin
@Mark: Well, the war on education tells you all you need to know about how the greatest generation feels about every generation that follows them.
Suffern ACE
@jrg: I’d be hard pressed not to join you. Its not like Ryan didn’t roll out a roadmap like this before the election, and its not like the over 55 crowd should be surprised that it is on the table. “Gold plated” medicare coverage…thinking that if you buy that “Private” program medicare plan that you are paying your own way…I’ll put my hands on that soon as I can.
Resentment is easy. Not falling for it is much harder.
j
The Bush II bribe did not produce nearly enough supporters among the elderly to get his Social Security privatization scam off the ground, and it was a similar divide and conquer approach.
Seems like more elderly are able to be bought off, or scared, into supporting GOP lines on Medicare. But maybe that is just an illusion caused by the corporate astroturfing of the health care debate.
The GOP has sold just about all its new supporters, or hoped for new supporters (that is, most Hispanics), since the Nixon days, down the river. The elderly are the ones who watched it all happen with their own eyes, so they should be catching on to the game by now.
Suffern ACE
@j: Remember though, a lot of those 55+ were cheering while those people were thrown under the bus back when they were 20 and 30. Why would we expect them to change in old age?
patrick II
When I saw the Ryan plan I couldn’t believe it. They put every bad idea the republicans have into one document, and a budget document at that. Remove medicare? check, cut education, student loans, and every other social program? check, threaten social security? check — and then “pay” for it all with laffer curve tax cuts for the rich. It is a republican roadmap to disaster that cannot be appreciated nearly as much in it’s individual facets, until packaged together into this one synergistic pile of incoherence.
If we really ever ran the country like this we would be Somalia in a month. Will enough republicans give their stamp of approval with a vote in the House? I certainly hope so.
jrg
@Suffern ACE:
Yes, the thought of paying for Medicare, but not receiving it really, really pisses me off… So it’s hard to say if I’m coming up with a belief in a left backlash to justify what I think I’d probably do if that were to happen, or if it really makes sense.
Dennis SGMM
@jrg:
I sure hope that you’re right. the GOP has had a lot of experience and a lot of success in pitting us against each other and then picking of the wounded.
Dennis SGMM
@Suffern ACE:
I don’t quite understand what you’re referring to. When I was in my twenties I was too busy with school and then the service to throw anyone under the bus. When I was in my thirties the Reaqan administration raised SS withholding to cover my generation’s retirement. I, and just about everyone I knew, felt that was fair.
Joseph Nobles
As much as Republicans guilt trip seniors over the impact of deficits and debt on their kids and grandkids, I can’t imagine that seniors wouldn’t be just as sensitive to destroying Medicare and Medicaid for their kids and grandkids as well.
And of course separating out the over-55 crowd would instantly inspire campaigns of “Throw Grandma From The Train” from these heartless GOP bastards.
Elia Isquire
@Omnes Omnibus: Agree. Ideologues are such weird creatures.
Maude
@Dennis SGMM:
Ryan is making Reagan look good. What a crazy time this is.
I have no memory of any push to get rid of Medicare 50 to 40 years ago.
Mike
The GOP is hoping that the oldsters will feel “protected” by them being grandfathered, but a cut is a cut, and seniors are extremely protective of their Medicare (as they should be). Anything that might even slightly resemble a cut in their benefits will be fought tooth and nail even by the teahadiest of the elderly tea partiers.
There’s a reason why they are rushing this vote and doing it with very little fanfare. What I don’t understand is why. Perhaps to move the goalposts? I don’t know. The people who spent all of 2010 bashing “medicare cuts” and promising to restore them now are trying to eliminate the entire program? What are you going to go home and tell your senior voters about how you lied to them?
Uloborus
@Mike:
I’m guessing that it’s not a good thing to be a Republican congressman right now. The new guys are either corporate whores breaking new ground in corruption, or they’re True Believers in the most batshit insane theories under the sun. Either way they will gleefully vote for – and push on their fellows – legislation that is not merely bad, but political suicide. Because either A) they think they don’t need reelection because their patrons will reward them or B) that annihilating the entire government will create a libertarian paradise and everyone will see they were right. The old guard – already ideologues, assholes, and what used to be considered corrupt – are trapped in a no-win game where defying these people makes them targets not just for primary attacks but harassment and threats. And the more they suck up to these people the worse that bind gets, but they didn’t figure it out until it was too late and you had to apologize publicly if you ever defied Rush. And to add another juicy dollop to the plate, they know damn well they’re going to have to step lively to weather the political implications of the ACA passing. Which they now have to do wearing the Teabaggers’ cement overshoes.
I have great faith in a political party’s ability to rebound from what seems like certain annihilation, but I suspect GOP congressmen are feeling a bit of pressure right now.
tkogrumpy
@Punchy: -I’m here to tell you old people do give a fuck.In very big numbers.
Cacti
Ryan’s trying to play seniors for suckers. Once the precedent for cutting Medicare is set, the next step will be to make the “tough choice” that those who were grandfathered into the old system are just too expensive, and the voucher plan will come about 5 years early.
Suffern ACE
@Uloborus: If they don’t want this, then why is Ryan the Chairman of his Committee? Did they not think budget issues would be front and center in 2011?
Uloborus
@Suffern ACE:
Like I said, the old guard feel they don’t have a choice. They’re riding the tiger. They have to not merely go along with but compete to howl the loudest with the genuine monkeys in the aisle next to them. That started becoming obvious in 2009 and the 2010 elections proved it in a politically bloody fashion. The Tea Jerks control the primaries and they are obsessed with purity and want someone as crazy as themselves leading them.
And bear in mind, they were assholes anyway and they’re afraid and uncomfortable with the idiocy of these policies, not morally repelled.
KS in MA
@tkogrumpy: Damn right. Don’t forget that (a) wingnuts troll sites like AARP as if they were getting paid for it and (b) they’re in the minority. And, those of us who think of SS and Medicare as more than abstractions are members of several generations by now: some are “oldsters” and “the Matlock generation,” and some are “people who realize we’ll have to keep working until we drop” and “the Civil Rights/Vietnam generation.”
Joel
You lay with dogs…
dollared
@KS in MA: They are getting paid for it. And they really do have chatbot software to have multiple personas trolling most news sites….
agrippa
I ma not sure. There are millions who vote GOP no matter what. There are states – especially, the old Confederacy – where the GOP is very safe and the Democratic Party is weak.
And, voters pay very little attention; daily life has many demands that take precedence over politics.
mclaren
Nay, nay, I say. You drastically underestimate the self-destructiveness of the American people.
American voters will eagerly vote to cut their own throats, and even fight viciously over how to pay for a sharper knife to do it.
lou
The real question is why anyone under 55 would vote for these fucks.