Bush and the GOP Health-Care Strategy

I’ve got a piece in NRO today arguing that although Democrats are bad on S-CHIP, conservatives, at least those with a free-market bent, need to be willing to call out Bush for his position as well.  The Democrats have won this issue in part by painting Bush and the rest of the GOP as "against S-CHIP," but the truth is, the Republicans want to expand the program too. By refusing to take a strong stand, they’ve hurt themselves far more than they know.

The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn and Slate’s Tim Noah both recently argued that even with a Bush veto, universal health-care supporters win on this issue. Why? Because Bush’s opposition to this, especially with the way it’s been painted by the Democrats as "against health care for children," has only helped lay the groundwork for support for universal coverage.  So Bush lost big-time, not just because of the way he and his party end up looking now, but because they’ve actually built support for a far more expansive, far more troublesome national health-care program in the future.  If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency — and right now, the best bet is that she will — Bush will have made it that much easier for her to pass her universal coverage program.

So Bush has dealt himself and his party a huge blow, not in service of principle or a tough stance on government-managed medical programs, but over a quibble about the details of a program.  On a purely political level, Bush might’ve been better off negotiating the Democrats down a little bit and then quietly going along.  At least that way, he wouldn’t have energized the universal health care crowd nearly as much.  Of course, the best option would’ve been for him to lay down some firm, positive principles from the outset, principles which could carry fiscal conservatives through the upcoming universal health care debate. There’s supposedly a movement afoot to "re-brand" the GOP as the party of "fiscal conservatism" (see this great New York Times picture of Bush posing in front of a giant banner with those words), but if this is what it looks like, I’m not impressed.