My long held conviction that Republicans are cry-baby-losers was reaffirmed by the events leading up to the passage of health care reform this week. Instead of engaging in the process of negotiation Republicans were united in their intransient policy of blocking President Obama and the Democrats agenda by all means necessary. Their outrageous antics even disgusted some of their fellow Republicans like David Frum, “The political imperative crowded out the policy imperative,” Mr. Frum said. “And the Republicans have now lost both. Politically I get the ‘let’s trip up the other side, make them fail’ strategy, but what’s more important, to win extra seats or to shape the most important piece of social legislation since the 1960’s? It was a go-for-all-the-marbles approach. Unless they produced an absolute failure to Mr. Obama, there wasn’t going to be any political benefit.” Even now, after the bill has been signed into law, the Republicans are vowing to mount a repeal effort, which by all accounts is doomed to failure.

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Updated on Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 03:58PM by Roxanne Walker

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s. It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But: (1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs. (2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now. So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson: A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves. At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994. Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure. This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In May, 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college, he had purchased his own health insurance. Shortly after his diagnosis, however, his insurance company, Fortis, revoked his policy. Mitchell was told that without further treatment his HIV would become full-blown AIDS within a year or two and he would most likely die within two years after that. So he hired an attorney — not because he wanted to sue anyone; on the contrary, the shy African-American teenager expected his insurance was canceled by mistake and would be reinstated once he set the company straight.

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