At least people are going to campaign on the issues:
I don’t think Newt Gingrich necessarily speaks for the GOP these days. But he said over the weekend that he’s sure every Republican in 2010 and 2012 will run on a pledge to repeal Health Care Reform. And though he was less definitive, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel said close to the same thing. Now given the relative unpopularity of the bill at this moment (which I strongly suspect will change) and its extreme unpopularity among partisan Republicans, that’s not a very surprising statement. What’s interesting to me, though, is that Democrats started saying last week that they plan to run on the same platform — namely, that if you vote for Republicans they’ll repeal Health Care Reform.
This really is a debate about what kind of country we want to have as Americans, do we want everyone to have equal access to health-care, or do we want to let insurance companies continue to fleece policy holders; in the name of free market worship.
My guess is this is a winning issue for Dems for two reasons. First, people know the system is broke and the health-care bill fixes some of the problems. Second, if Republicans are going to run against the health-reform bill they might have to say what they would replace it with. The party of “NO” is not very good at coming up with policy and just stamping yoour feet does not win many elections outside of your local homeowners association.
I would argue the health reform bill is a step in the right direction, definitely better than the status quo.