The Story Behind the All Night Medicare Vote

Stephen Moore's first-hand account of the Bush Administration's duplicity in the medicare debacle concludes:

"I really believe that if we could have won this vote against the most powerfulwhip operation in the history of House and a popular Republican president, it would have been a shot across the bow at the Republican establishment that conservatives are sick of the spending splurge that is going on inside Washington these last few years. The budget has grown by 27% in two years a faster rate of growth in the budget than at anytime since LBJ’s presidency. Republican leaders in the White House and the Congress seem entirely unconcerned about the orgy of spending and debt. They are in denial. A deserved defeat of this bill would have dropped an ice cold bucket of water on their heads and helped them snap out of it. So close!

"I’m convinced this is a phyric victory for the Republican party bosses. The bill could blow up in the Republicans’ laps when seniors see the details of the carved up turkey they’ve just been served. Worse, the bill threatens to further demoralize fiscal conservative voters who are infuriated by the GOP’s massive expansion of government. I know I’m demoralized. As Mike Pence told me last week, “We Republicans seem to have forgotten who we are and why voters sent us here.”

We now have two big government parties in Washington. And we only have 25 Republicans in the House and 4 in the Senate who are trying to pull the Republicans in an anti-big government direction."

That sounds like things are about as bad for (small government) Republicans as the year 1935 as the fascist New Deal steamroller went full bore. And Bush's domestic policy reeks of the me-tooism of an Alf Landon, the original progressive, compassionate conservative.