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Time for the Guv to morph into Chris Christie (6/28/2011)

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Yesterday, I noted with some frustration that when John McCain introduced the first GOP amendment to the Senate health care bill on Monday, it was a proposal to stop $500 billion in cuts to Medicare….

For one thing, this is why I was so frustrated by Michael Steele's ill-considered campaign to marshal support from seniors by defending Medicare. It's absolutely true that Democrats have been misleading the public by claiming that cutting billions from Medicare won't result in benefit reductions. But thanks in large part to Steele, it now frequently seems as if Republicans, ostensibly defenders of limited government, have devoted themselves to endless, unchanging preservation of entitlements for seniors….

Indeed, the defense of McCain's amendment isn't that it's great policy, but that it's basically a tactical move designed to kill a terrible bill….

More important, though, is that this incident illustrates rather vividly what happens whenever you mix health care and politics: politics trumps all else. The debate we're seeing here isn't actually about health care; it's about party power, about winning and losing, about elections and interest groups, about polls and press and short-term tactical considerations. That doesn't strike me as a particularly appealing way to approach health care, but if reform legislation passes, I suspect we're in for even more of it than ever.

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