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SHRED

(28,136 posts)
Thu Dec 15, 2011, 12:06 PM Dec 2011

The Start of a Newt Era of Policy Battles

In a conversation with California Healthline, Taylor pointed to the 1992-1994 collapse of President Clinton's health plan as the moment when the ground shifted.

The concerted resistance to Clinton's reforms -- as well as the White House's own missteps -- is well-chronicled in "The System," a 1996 book by Washington Post reporters David Broder and Haynes Johnson.
In an excerpt from the book:

Newt Gingrich was determined there would be no Republican support for the only kind of reform Clinton would offer. ... Politically, he had no interest in compromise. ... As early as 1991, Gingrich had concluded that thwarting Democrats on health care was the key to halting and then rolling back decades of Democratic efforts to build an encompassing social safety net.

Led by then-House Minority Whip Gingrich and his "coagulation" strategy of building clots of resistance, Republicans deflected Democrats' reforms. Even Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole -- who initially assured Clinton that they'd "work something out" -- backed away from dealmaking with the White House.
Gingrich's opposition plan ultimately helped the GOP retake the House in 1994.
And "that was the beginning" of the current era of partisan health care battles, according to Taylor.


Read more: http://www.californiahealthline.org/road-to-reform/2011/politics-have-always-been-part-of-policy-but-have-we-hit-a-new-low.aspx#ixzz1gcTl7h6h

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The seeds this man has sown are terrible.
The furious karma he will reap won't be stopped or lessened by his phony conversion...he is still this way.
He is evil personified.


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