Compassionless Conservatism

It's amazing to see how conservative pundits are reacting to the debate on Capitol Hill over the S-CHIP program. For the most part, conservative politicians (including the President himself) realize that S-CHIP is enormously popular and that the conservative vision of a world without programs like S-CHIP is one fraught with political peril. That's why the President and Republicans in Congress who oppose the S-CHIP renewal bill are always careful to frame their opposition to the bill as being about their concern for poor children. They claim that they oppose the bill because it takes money away from poor children and uses it to provide insurance to middle-class children whose parents can afford private insurance. This argument is both inaccurate and deeply disingenuous, but at least it reflects some appreciation of the fact that many Americans worry about providing health insurance to their families and aren't interested in being lectured to and judged by heartless politicians who have no idea what it's like to be one accident away from financial ruin.

Conservative pundits, on the other hand, seem to be totally oblivious to these basic political realities. They've spent much of the last two weeks going after two very typical working-class families, publicly chastising them for their supposed laziness and irresponsibility, all because they happen to rely on the S-CHIP program to insure their children's health. Last week, for example, the National Review's Mark Steyn devoted a number of posts to criticizing the Frost family for its poor "choices" (based on a complete mischaracterization of their circumstances). And today, Mark Hemingway, also at the National Review, devotes an entire article to attacking the Wilkerson family of Tampa Bay, Florida. He criticizes them for, among other things, not continuing to work indefinitely at miserable jobs solely for the health insurance those jobs provided, for having the temerity to discuss whether they wanted to have kids prior to marrying each other, and ultimately for deciding to have children at all given their financial situation. For this, he labels the Wilkersons "real poster children — for irresponsible decisions."

If the goal here is to convince people that the Republican party is the party of judgmental, compassionless A-holes, well mission accomplished. Talk about political tone-deafness. But let's put aside for a second the fact that people like Mark Steyn and Mark Hemingway are presumptuous jerks who know very little about the actual circumstances of these families (and certainly don't know enough to render informed judgment as to their relative "responsibleness" as parents and providers).

Let's assume for the moment that these parents are in fact "irresponsible" in some meaningful way. What boggles my mind is that these guys presume that the rest of us actually want to live in a world where children are forced to go without health insurance because they have irresponsible parents. Or a world where the penalty for making a bad decision is that your children are made to suffer and your family goes bankrupt. Or, for that matter, a world where the only "responsible" choice you have is to work forever at a miserable job that you hate, just so that you'll have access to health insurance.

Steyn and Hemingway seem to think that they're making persuasive arguments against programs like S-CHIP, but all they're really doing is painting a picture of a world that no one wants to live in. They're highlighting everything that people hate about our current, broken health care system while trashing the few aspects of it that make it less merciless and more forgiving. As Digby put it earlier today:

This is what Republicans call "solutions to problems:" all of you people who work in jobs that don't offer health insurance, and can't afford the ridiculously expensive private health care plans that are available, well, you need to get a job that provides health insurance for your whole family --- or don't have kids. Oh, and while you're at it, you'd better be prepared to do whatever it takes to keep that job no matter what, especially if your kid gets sick, because if you find yourself without health insurance for any reason it will be because it was your choice. This is what Republicans call "freedom."

I don't know how people like Steyn and Hemingway can possibly think that people will eagerly embrace their cruel and unforgiving vision of America. At least conservative politicians have sense enough to appreciate how unappealing and politically toxic such policies are (which is why they pretend that they're just looking out for the interests of poor children). We're a country founded on a promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The conservative vision of health care policy threatens all three. It threatens life by making health care inaccessible to many people, including children. And it threatens liberty and the pursuit of happiness by trapping people in jobs they hate and discouraging them from venturing out on their own, starting businesses, or simply pursuing the vocation that would make them the most happy and productive.

There are countless Americans out there whose circumstances are not all that different from the Frosts and Wilkersons, hard-working people who either can't afford insurance or who live in constant fear of losing their insurance. And these people really don't want to be lectured to by arrogant Republican ideologues about the "choices" they make. It's tough out there, and we already have the least forgiving health care system in all of the industrialized world. For most people in this country, a layoff and an ill-timed accident or illness are all that stands between them and bankruptcy. But conservatives nevertheless want to rollback the few programs, like S-CHIP, that exist to make the system a little more forgiving. Somehow rolling back what few safeguards we have will make us all more free.

If that's the vision of America conservatives want to sell, good luck, because no one's going to buy it. You can fool people about a lot of things in politics. You can convince them that a foreign war is necessary when it isn't. You can convince them that tax cuts lead to more revenue. You can even convince a lot of them that Bush is a great president. But when it comes to things that are central to their daily lives, like health care, it is much harder to fool people. They know how unfair and unforgiving our system is. They know the risks they face and how easily everything can go to hell. And they're not going to be fooled when people like Steyn and Hemingway claim that our system works great if you just act "responsibly." In fact, they are very likely to find that sort of condescending obliviousness offensive. So by all means, guys, keep it up. You're just driving people away from the Republican party.

(for a line-by-line take down of Hemingway's article, I recommend this post by the indispensable Steve Benen)