March 2, 2009: Columnist: Republicans’ Total Opposition to Obama Economic Agenda Echoes Health Care Opposition of 1993

Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent writes that the current Republican plan of “total obstructionism” towards the Obama administration’s economic policies echoes the Republicans’ 1993 efforts to defeat the Clinton administration’s health care program (see December 2, 1993). In 1993, Republican pundit William Kristol warned that if the health care plan were successful and indeed improved the lives of Americans, the damage to the Republican Party’s image and ideology would be severe. Therefore, even though, according to Sargent, the plan stood an excellent chance of improving the US health care system, it had to be defeated. Sargent writes that today’s Republican opposition to President Obama’s economic plans “echo… the strategic objectives Kristol articulated 15 years ago.” Unfortunately, the Republican Party is far worse off “now than it was then in terms of being able to achieve those objectives.… Fifteen years later, of course, political conditions are dramatically different. Polls show the public broadly supports a far more activist role for government and backs Obama’s plans to expand the federal government’s role in a way not seen in decades. And it’s conservative ideas that are in retreat. Yet the GOP is pursuing roughly the same strategy today that it did then.” [Plum Line, 3/2/2009]