An editorial in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch quite sensibly observed that Proposition C was a very poor tool for amplifying the anti-Obamacare message nationally:
The megaphone is muffled when the message is “One in every six registered Missouri voters (71 percent of the 23 percent who turned out) sent a message to Washington.”
On the other side of the state, the Kansas City Star struck the same deflationary note:
…a light turnout made clear what the vote wasn’t: a sweeping referendum on health reform. An electorate seriously riled up about an issue sends more than roughly a fourth of registered voters to the polls.
The silliness of all the conservative celebratory braying is recognized even outside the state. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post put the matter very succinctly:
I’m really not sure why conservatives are so excited that an electorate primarily made of Republican primary voters passed an anti-individual mandate ballot initiative in Missouri. I don’t even understand why conservatives would be excited if it passed during a normal election. For one thing, states can’t invalidate federal laws. … . Moreover the focus on the individual mandate speaks to how weak the conservative case against the bill is. The individual mandate can be replaced. That wouldn’t be a good thing, but you could substitute automatic enrollment, or some form of lock-out..
All very rational – however, if we were living in a rational political world, there would never have been a proposition C. If you want to gauge the effect of Proposition C in our current political Bizarro World, look no further than the first page of today’s Post Dispatch.
Despite the excellent editorial, the cover story on Proposition C gave State Senator and Proposition C cheerleader, Jane Cunningham (R-Dist.7), full bragging rights. The reporter evidently felt that bringing up real, verifiable facts like the small turnout was not necessary when he could manufacture a story about how Missouri voters “overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance.” I am afraid that this reporting path will prove to be that most traveled before this is all over.
Nor do we have to wait too long to see just how an orgy of Proposition C triumphalism is going to encourage the crazies to go even further. FiredUp! reported yesterday that State Senator Jim Lembke (R-Dist. 1) is so emboldened by the Prop C victory that he proclaimed his support for having Missouri defy the federal mandate that requires emergency rooms to treat the uninsured – which does, at least, have the virtue that it tells anyone who is interested just how mean-minded Proposition C-loving GOP fringers really are.
Rachel Maddow on MSNBC used this analogy about the Prop C voters: It was like asking Red Sox fans their opinion of the Yankees. Duh.
Although it’s a guess on my part at this point, I think it’s very likely that each of those who voted for 2010’s Prop C have some form of health insurance. Those who don’t bother with health insurance do not go to the polls. Whether health insurance makes sense or not, is not even the issue with those who voted for this Prop C. The issue is whether the Federal government, or any government for that matter, has the right to tell them what to do. One irony is that most of these voters were from agricultural areas and while they decry Federal intrusion into their lives happily participate in USDA programs that subsidize their farming operations. And when reminded that these subsidies border on socialism they behave much like cockroaches when the light comes on, they scurry for their dark hiding places and await the dawn of another night.
And I think it’s possible to say that the group who voted for Propositin C correspond to the Tea Partiers and it’s hard to say what they think because their claims and assertions are so often confused and contradictory.
Many of the Tea Party types that I have met are more than willing to use government to compel behavior that conforms to their own particular value system. You are correct about their willingness to be on the receiving side of government benefits, although they rationalize this in a number of ways. They do often espouse a sort of half-baked libertarianism, but it is far from intellectually consistent and has a sort of hearsay basis – as witness their spurious assertions abut the constitution most of which would be laughable if the poor dears weren’t so serious.