Swampland’s Kate Pickert who, along with Karen Tumulty, has been providing regular, fine commentary on heath care reform efforts, sees current GOP efforts to scare Democrats with threats of parliamentary hardball (hard to imagine they’d really go that far, I know) as similar to the threats they made right before the Democrats passed the Senate heath care bill. She seems skeptical about the Republicans ability to stop reconciliation but points to Pelosi’s other Democratic problems lining up the necessary votes.
But I think the Republicans deserve more credit. If the legislation passes, it’s fair to say that Republicans made it happen. By lying and demagoguing “Obamacare” they rallied liberals, centrists and Congressional Democrats to push policies that had only lukewarm support at best and generated outright anger on the left. They may have made it absolutely necessary and possible for Democrats to pass this legislation.
UPDATE: Just in case you didn’t believe in the benefits of Republican obstructionism.
Emotions move voters. So there’s that.
I think the trouble is fear and resentment generally tend to be more powerful emotional movers than mere hope for positive change. And they tend to move things to the right. Let’s just hope that there’s less of them come November.