On Death Marches and Lost Causes

As of this writing, it appears the U.S. Senate has achieved a bipartisan compromise over the shutdown and the debt ceiling. It is highly likely the House will agree and a funding bill will reach the President's desk in time to avoid a default. 

As the Disease Management Care Blog understands it, the contentious issues of the size of government and debt will have to be revisited in a matter of weeks.  That practically guarantees another round of brinksmanship and frothy bloggery in December.

So what has the DMCB learned from this imbroglio?

It is of two minds.......

While a critical mass of Congressional Republicans have embarrassed their party with a forced death march to nowhere, there's something to be said for sticking to your principles. Nice try. After all, advocates of the quintessentially liberal cause of gun control vow to inconveniently bring the topic up again and again. While their odds are long, the DMCB is reminded that that was a tactic that may have ultimately turned the tide on same sex marriage. The DMCB hopes the "nagging and haranguing" strategy ultimately prevails on behalf of reasonable tort reforms nationally and getting the DMCB spouse to yield her HGTV tuning locally.

As Mr. Smith points out, the only things worth fighting for are "lost causes."



On the other hand, it can be argued that the rancorous and bitter fruits of the Affordable Care Act are likewise the result of a Democratic majority's unwillingness to compromise. While supporters of Obamacare correctly point out that its provisions were interdependent and based on Republican ideas, there is some truth to the perspective that the process was a blunt force exercise in partisan political jujitsu and an historical lesson in how not to pass and implement a big law.  In other words, Mr. Smith makes for good Hollywood but makes for lousy governance.