Frum Fired

So the thing I don’t get about David Frum getting canned is that there’s an unequivocal sense in which the health care strategy of the GOP failed. And matter what flavor of the hour predictions Chris Matthews was making it always looked they’d pass something through. Even after Scott Brown, they had a bill through the Senate and a huge majority to work with in the House.

The viability of pretty any political strategy depends on an assessment of if you’ll or lose. Since they had 60 votes, or 59 and a passed bill it’s just clear why the GOP thought they would defeat the bill. There were never any unconditional no votes on the Senate side, just conditional yes votes. Maybe they didn’t they could win, but thought their opposition would lead the broader public drop their support for Obama. It hasn’t happened.

You get a similar calculus on financial reform, climate change or immigration. If it’s going to become law then maybe you don’t want to be on the losing side or you’ll take a tough vote to break the tie, but the same politicians being asked to be the 52nd vote for something that’s going down might not be so interested. Just thinking for myself I’d lose my seat for climate legislation, but not to make environmentalists feel better because they lost by a smaller amount.

So you can’t do strategy without having the discussion Frum wants to have, but apparently it’s beyond the pale for the modern GOP to even try to talk openly.

-Chris