The health care vote will not help the GOP

From David Frum, via Joshua Tucker:

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Frum 'gets it', in that he understands two key points:

1. It's the economy that drives voting behavior, not specific pieces of legislation. Conservatives might be mad at the Democrats for 'ramming reform down the peoples' throats', but conservatives were hardly going to vote Democratic in the fall elections anyway.
2. Once enacted, social welfare legislation is difficult, almost impossible to repeal. Social welfare programs create their own constituencies that are independent (no pun intended) from partisan identification. This is why Republicans have been so unsuccessful at dismantling New Deal or Great Society social welfare legislation. It's also why European countries with right-wing cabinets still have most of their welfare states largely intact.

The Democrats might lose a lot of seats in November, but if they do it's the economy that will be the cause.