NEW CASTLE —
In presidential primary campaigns, a common tactic is to cast your opponent as a sympathizer of the other party.
You’re seeing a lot of that in this year’s Republican presidential contest as Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul attempt to define each other in Democratic terms.
It’s all an effort by these four hopefuls to be identified as the one “true” conservative in the race, best expressing the values of the GOP. Of course, how one defines “true” is a matter of opinion.
So you see a lot of jousting on such topics as taxes, deficit spending, abortion, gun control, earmarks and the like. But one subject in particular continues to amaze me.
It has to do with mandates for insurance required under the new health care reform act. This topic has emerged as issue No. 1 in Republican attempts to unravel Democratic-backed changes to health care in the country.
Basically, we’re talking about a requirement that all Americans have health insurance, in much the same way that all motorists must have coverage in order to drive.
Legal attacks on health reform have focused on this mandate. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments this year that could lead to a rejection of this key provision of the health care law.
Foes say it’s unconstitutional, because Congress lacks the legal basis to require citizens to have insurance, while defenders counter that Washington’s power to regulate interstate commerce gives it ample authority to do so.
Recently, I received an email from the Santorum campaign attacking Romney and Gingrich over “Obamacare.” The email highlighted the ongoing argument that Santorum’s two foes had, in the past, supported insurance mandates, even though they stridently oppose them now.
While Romney and Gringrich seek to deny such charges, they essentially are true. But so what?
There’s an ugly little secret about health insurance mandates: They originally were a Republican idea before President Obama and other Democrats co-opted them.
What was once a perfectly respectable GOP proposal, built upon the notion of individual responsibility and accountability, somehow morphed into an example of big government run amok.
Think about it. In this country, virtually everyone has access to some degree of health care, whether they have private insurance, government-funded coverage or nothing at all.
People without any insurance theoretically can pay for their own care out of pocket. But what happens if they can’t afford it, or the bills exceed their checkbooks?
Well, someone else picks up the tab. Typically, that’s you and me. Our taxes, our insurance fees, our co-payments indirectly subsidize people who don’t have coverage.
Mandated insurance is a way of injecting a little fairness into the system. It may not be perfect — nothing is when it comes to something like health care coverage. But it’s far from a deep, dark Democratic plot.
And it’s far from socialism. That term better describes the current system Republicans say they want to reinstall.
When it comes to health care reform in this country, Democrats bungled it badly — mainly by failing to sell their plan to the American people. Had they done that, it would have generated the popular support necessary to force moderate Republicans to the negotiating table.
The result would have been a genuine bipartisan effort on health care, that would have established a process for moving forward on this complex issue.
Instead, we have an ongoing war.
Mitchel Olszak
Related Photos
-
Mitchel Olszak, Dear Reader
Discussion
Mitchel Olszak: Republicans deny role in mandated coverage
- Mitchel Olszak
-
-
Mitchel Olszak: Snooping threat to the free press
In “All the President’s Men,” reporter Bob Woodward conducts late-night meetings with a source in a parking garage. That source, Deep Throat (later revealed to be high-ranking FBI official Mark Felt), was worried that he would be exposed as a tipster in the Watergate scandal.
-
Mitchel Olszak: Toomey takes a chance on guns
How does a conservative Republican senator representing a state with a Democratic majority protect himself politically? One way is to take positions that tend to straddle the nation’s ideological fence.
-
Mitchel Olszak: Terrorists strive to create fear
The finish line of a road race serves as the division between one world and another. Ahead of the finish line, there is structure and discipline, with attention paid to the runners as they cross over. Spectators are kept back, mainly to avoid interfering with the participants — and perhaps to keep them from being trampled.
-
Mitchel Olszak: Kelly, allies battle arms treaty
Supporters of the right to bear arms have a champion in Congressman Mike Kelly. The federal lawmaker, whose district includes most of Lawrence County, has been making waves with his criticism of the Obama administration and its support for the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.
-
Mitchel Olszak: I like beer, so I’m watching our state closely
I like beer. More to the point, I like good beer. In my younger days, just about any swill would do. But with the passage of time, sophistication and exposure to the possibilities, my interests in beer have sharpened and matured.
-
Mitchel Olszak: Political lessons from distant past hold value today
If you want to gain an appreciation for great thinkers, read some of history’s major political philosophies. Here you will find the works of Plato, Machiavelli, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, St. Augustine and many others. They explored difficult social issues and offered serious insight.
-
Mitchel Olszak: Do the emotional centers of the brain guide our politics?
People who hold specific political points of view like to think their positions are based on serious analysis. They view their given ideologies as careful conclusions reached through assessing the world around them and examining how things work. Thus, liberals and conservatives both manage to claim the intellectual and ethical high ground.
-
Mitchel Olszak: Will GOP survive current divisions?
Somebody asked me the other day if I thought the Republican Party was about to split apart. I said no. It was an assessment based on history. Creating a new political party in America is a challenging process. They occasionally crop up, but they don’t last.
-
Mitchel Olszak: History as a matter of chance
History is full of pivotal moments. What if Socrates had decided against drinking that hemlock? What if Gutenberg hadn’t developed his printing press? What if Washington’s army failed to survive the winter at Valley Forge? What if Edison gave up on inventing the light bulb?
-
Mitchel Olszak: Pennsylvanians shouldn’t be fooled by electoral hijinks
Back in the 2000 presidential election, Americans received a civics lesson of sorts. Much of it involved obscure terms such as hanging and dimpled chads, as well as butterfly ballots. All of this, of course, came courtesy of Florida, whose clumsy election efforts produced an extended period of uncertainty in the presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
- More Mitchel Olszak Headlines
-
