The Dogs That Won't Bark

Chris Cillizza writes in the Washington Post:

2012 Republicans line up in opposition to Obama health care bill

1. Making clear that the recently-passed health care bill will be a major point of debate in the 2012 presidential race, Republicans eying a run for the top spot sought to one-up each other with their condemnations of the bill.

The country at large is of a hundred minds about healthcare, wanting it for all citizens (by a wide majority) and unhappy with what they have been given (by a lesser but significant number).

Me too. Put me on that list.

But, for me at least, lowering the entry bar to Medicare is a moderate but sufficient answer to my desire to see a 'public option' survive in some form. On the abortion issue, private 'add on' insurance is available and no doubt insurers will pick up on that, so I'm OK. Not yet dancing on the table about the legislation, but OK.

Interestingly, Republicans are setting their attack dogs loose against, essentially, every issue that connects the current 40% who no longer consider themselves Democrat or Republican. That's a damned big number to be factored into the last four elections, all of which were decided by micro-percentages and during which 'swing voters' didn't approach 10%, much less forty.

The base for both parties is less and less relevant. Dedicated party voters may hold their noses, but they're not going to vote for the other guy. The self proclaimed 40% are made up of those who have thrown up their hands in horror of their own party's inability to govern.

They are the key to the upcoming mid-terms and, if Republicans think they will respond to a no-solution, no-protection, no-alternative style of fear based politics, I think they are badly mistaken.

Come mid-term elections, those dogs simply will not bark.

I personally think both parties will be punished, as they well deserve, in a more random and unfathomable way.