Joe, Terry, George,
When Leslie posted that last night, I tweeted back:
keep playing the race card if it makes you lefties feel better.
To which she responded
First, you’re way out of line. Second, what’s your counter-argument to Dowd? As I said, I hate to think she’s right.
I have no way to interpret her original tweet as anything other than an endorsement of Dowd. And is that not playing the race card? As for a counter-argument, I offered this.
It may be easier to believe there are ugly undertones to the opposition to Obamacare rather than accept the possibility that the opponents are motivated, as George noted, by deeply held, respectable principles:
What seems to have gone wrong can be described as a failure of the
imagination: Obama’s administration just never believed Republicans
would stand up for their limited government principles if that meant opposing business interests. They were
apparently assuming that Republicans and conservatives could be won
over by winning over “business interests,” as if free market and
anti-government positions were just rhetorical cover for policy making
at the behest of business.
Republicans can still blow it, for instance. Sen. Max Baucus is supposed to introduce his grand compromise tomorrow, and some GOPers could be won over. As we’ve noted before, there’s a lot to hate about Baucus’s plan, too.
BTW, there was an interesting exchange between Walsh and Reason’s Matt Welch on the topic of race and Obamacare last week here. (For an example of racial nuttiness, note Walsh’s original e-mail to Welch.)
