Four Score and seven years ago our Fathers brought forth
On this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty
And dedicated to the proposition that
All men are created equal
Now we are engaged in a great Civil War,
Testing whether that nation, or any nation
So conceived and so dedicated, can long endure
After passage of the Whig’s Great Reform Bill, when the Tories regained the primeministership in 1834 under Sir Robert Peel, he conceded in the Tamworth Manifesto that the Tories accepted the Bill’s destruction of crown patronage and rotten boroughs in favor of the new electoral system; and then he defiantly declared that the Tories would thrash the Whigs at the polls.
The Republican Party sustained devastating defeats in 2006 and 2008. As of 2010, with large majorities in both houses of congress and holding the presidency, the Democrats have passed the Stimulus Bill, nationalized GM and Chrysler, continued to bail out wall street, are formulating new regulations for the financial industry, plan to nationalize the student loan industry, the House has passed Cap and Trade, and on March 23rd the President signed into law the Senate version of health care reform.
With the passing of health care reform we behold the victory of the astounding proposition that federal tax law and criminal law are necessary to enforce a “right “to health care. This is reminiscent of Buckley’s statement that “Liberals don’t care what you do as long as it’s compulsory.” Heretofore in American political theory and history, rights had been associated with liberty rather than compulsion, but no longer, it seems. And, according to the House Speaker, there’s more statist compulsion where that came from.
What is most remarkable about the sordid saga of health care reform is that the Senate bill could not pass the Senate today and it was only passed by a House that immediately voted to amend it. It remains to be seen whether the reconciliation bill with its fixes will pass the Senate. But the question is, how was all this possible?
Two things account for the tortuous path that health care reform legislation has taken: the spontaneous and articulate protest of a large portion of the American People on the one hand, and ironclad party discipline on the part of the House and Senate Republicans, on the other. Who could have predicted that there would be anything but smooth sailing for health care reform given the fact that as a candidate the Democratic President campaigned on this issue and that the elections resulted in a 60 seat, filibuster proof Senate and a 40 seat majority in the House. Yet, public opinion has been completely reversed on health care and this prodigious political feat has forced the Democrats in congress and as well as the President to lay bare for all to see unvarnished their statist objectives and the lengths to which they are willing to go to achieve them.
Now, the question becomes, not whether the Republican Party will be transformed, but whether it will be transformed Tamworth-style into a “me-too” party, accepting as a fait accompli the triumph of Statism and seeking only to share in its spoils–or whether it will refound itself to restore the founding principles of liberty and limited government and bring forth “a new birth of freedom”, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.