Blocking Obama's Health Plan is Key to GOP's Survival?

You've got to hand it to James Pethokoukis. He's got a canny ability to get a grip on the hot issues of the day like few others.

So it is with his new piece, "How Tom Daschle Might Kill Conservatism," which includes this provocative passage:

Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."

You know, while I'd need to read the research Pethokoukis cites, given our current economic predicament, I could see huge numbers of voters finding attraction with a statist/redistributionist policy agenda of the Democratic Party for years to come, especially if Barack Obama proves to be smart in office, and actually passes some landmark legislation. Indeed, such an outcome, bolstered by some electoral endurance for Obama's demographic coalition, would confirm that we've indeed had a genuine realignment.

If there's any good news in this it's that Margaret Thatcher came to power in Britain in 1979. So, using this same timeline offered by Pethokoukis, the GOP will be the country's minority party for just 35 years.

Sweet!