Frum on the Budget Debate

Conservative blogger David Frum fears the Republican push for the Ryan plan plays right into Obama's hands on Frum Forum.

Here’s a basic fact of American politics. The American people like Medicare. They are not so enthusiastic about tax cuts for the rich. Those of us on the political right have different preferences. We believe that low rates for high earners accelerate economic growth. We believe that the cost of Medicare must be restrained. And I think we have a lot of good arguments on our side. But we must never deceive ourselves: We are arguing for policies with a lot of political negatives attached to them. Which means we have to take some basic political precautions.

In the current Republican mood, however, precautions are for girlie-men. Republicans have succumbed to a strange mood of simultaneous euphoria and paranoia. Republicans have convinced themselves both that: (1) American freedom stands in imminent danger of disappearing into totalitarian night; and (2) that the vast majority of the great and good American people are yearning for a mighty rollback of big government, even at considerable personal sacrifice.

And so Republicans have united around Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposal that for the first time in modern conservative history explicitly joins a big tax cut for the rich to big cuts in health care spending for virtually everybody else. If this were a tennis game, the Republicans would be placing the ball in exactly the spot on the court where it must never, ever go.

Frum goes on to quote a recent USA Today/Gallup poll showing that Americans reject changes to Medicare by a 2 to 1 margin and that 59% favor raising taxes on the rich. He concludes that the GOP is making the same mistake it made in the health care debate.

It’s exactly like what happened on health care reform, where Republicans persuaded themselves they had Obama on the ropes even as he succeeded in enacting the most important new entitlement since 1965. We went for all the marbles, and ended with none. Now I fear we are doing it again.

--Ballard Burgher