Carnahan's Previous Statements on Health Care
[ Patrick Tuohey ]Intrepid Springfield political reporter (and member of the blogger paparazzi) David Catanese offered proof to The Record that yesterday was not the first time Secretary of State Robin Carnahan had been asked tough questions about health care reform. His own brief interview (recorded by what seems to be a video phone) is dated July 24 and is available here.
Catanese starts off with the accusation from beautiful, dirty, rich Republicans that Carnahan's campaign is merely chillin and not taking hard positions on important issues.
Carnahan: "I'm campaigning a lot and also doing my job. What I think this is really about is just getting things done for folks and not staking out hard and fast partisan positions that sort of cause you to just take pot shots on things but actually figure out how to get things done."
Despite the ol' soft shoe response, Catanese shows he does not want to just dance. He asks her specifically about a public option.
Carnahan: "That's not something I am not going to rule out." She goes on about how we need in increase competition and then spins into one of those Dickie Flatt political answers that eats up time yet offers nothing substantive. "We've got to create a system that has pricing pressure. And so I am open for however we do that because that's the only way we're going to get prices down..."
Catanese tries again, "So a government option would be something you could support," but Carnahan keeps her poker face.
Carnahan: "Y'know, depending on what it looks like absolutely.... We have got to do something that keeps insurance companies honest,and if that means a government option--that's a government option. If there is another way to do that and bring prices down, I am open to talking about that."
Catanese: "What about the critique that a government option would... push private insurance companies out of business because the government option could always set the lowest price?"
Carnahan: "Well okay I don't think that is going to happen, that hasn't been the history of what has happened with Medicare and Medicaid. We've had government involved in health care for a long time and in a lot of cases it has worked pretty well."
Here, to me, is the money quote where Carnahan goes on the offensive:
Carnahan: "Congressman Blunt and I disagree about this. He wants the status quo--he seems satisfied with how things are working in health care--I don't. I'm not satisfied at all,either as a consumer, a patient, I'm not satisfied for small businesses where the prices continue to go up and coverage goes down. And I am not satisfied for government where we have these escalating prices at the same time insurance company profits continue to go up. It's a broken system. It needs reform. [Eh, nothing else I can say]."
In the second clip, Catanese shows he is no paper gangsta and presses the candidate on costs. Here she falls back time and again on soft answers and obfuscation. Catanese lists some of her quotes:
- "We've got to come up with money somewhere and what I'm against is having it be on middle class folks and small businesses."
- "I'm not going to take a position on what that number is."
- "When you walk up to me and give me some binary choice about something somebody else decided--am I for it or against it--I'd probably come up with a different plan."
Carnahan would like us to think that she is too busy working for the people of Missouri to take time to indulge in lowly partisan politics. Yet she is a partisan--a Democratic candidate--running in a primary to win a political seat. Furthermore, although being in the Senate is probably not as taxing a job as leading an executive department, it is required that she be able to handle several matters at once. Robin is a big girl now, she can be Secretary of State and formulate some opinions on specific health care reform proposals. She just thinks she can rely on voters being starstruck by the fame of her family name.
Her too-busy-to-politick defense is belied by her cogent and complete criticism of Representative Roy Blunt. Make no mistake, Carnahan knows what she thinks about health care reform. The people writing her campaign large checks know what she thinks about health care reform. But her campaign has evidently calculated that those views must be kept quiet in order to avoid a bad romance with voters. Sadly, the Missouri media may be an unwittingly complicit by letting her play this little lovegame.
My years in political research and what I have seen from the voters of the Show-Me State tell me that they are unimpressed with mere political vanity. Unless Carnahan adopts a new strategy, come 2010 her supporters won't have little White House ornaments from Senator Carnahan hanging from their Christmas tree.
(As a tribute to Catanese, the above post contains several Lady Gaga song titles. Can you find all 15?)
11/11/2009 10:53:19 AM
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