April 18, 2005

TennCare Politics

Tennessean political columnist Larry Daughtrey agrees with me in a column asserting that Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen is politically vulnerable because of his inept handling of the TennCare mess and his "reform" plan that consists of slashing 323,000 poor, sick, old and disabled people from rolls:

Bredesen was elected largely on the belief by voters that he could, indeed, fix TennCare. Now the Republicans can point out that the only fix he could find is a Draconian chopping that any fifth-grader could have devised.

Every newspaper and television story about former TennCare patients who die — and there are going to be some — becomes an unpaid Republican commercial.

The numbers alone are enough to give Bredesen pause. He beat a mediocre Republican candidate by only 50,000 votes. The 323,000 people being cut from TennCare are all adults of voting age. About 140,000 live in East Tennessee, the Republican stronghold where Bredesen won in 2002 by holding down the traditional GOP margin.

Oversimplification often works in politics. Even an unskilled political operative can devise the television commercial showing Bredesen as the man who built a multimillion-dollar palace (albeit a leaky one) for an absentee owner's professional football team but kicked sick people out on the curb.

On the other hand, Roger Abramson, the Nashville Scene's token conservative political writer - who is right much more often than Daughtrey - thinks I'm wrong. Abramson says the TennCare mess will not make Bredesen vulnerable in '06. In fact, says Abramson, "Bredesen may well come out of this even stronger than he began."

I do agree with Abramson and Daughtrey on one key point: Tennessee Republicans won't beat a vulnerable Bredesen without a solid candidate. Abramson:

You can't beat somebody with nobody and no one has really stepped up to the plate to take Bredesen on. (Rumor has it right now that Beth Harwell may do it--but that's just rumor.) I don't care how many Democratic voters Bredesen alienates; they aren't going to vote for some Mickey Mouse candidate on the GOP slate.

"The only thing that saves him is that the Republicans don't have a candidate. Their strongest potentials seem intent on a fratricidal battle for a U.S. Senate seat."

Normally, if Abramson says I'm wrong and Daughtrey agrees with me, I'd take it as good evidence that I needed to rethink my position. But Roger is a conservative - and conservatives sometimes look at the glass whose contents are 50 percent liquid and look for reasons to describe it as half empty rather than half full.

Larry Daughtrey, on the other hand, is a liberal Democrat columnist not prone to saying bad things about Democrats unless they're undeniably true. I'm right this time - Bredesen is vulnerable. But only if the Republicans nominate a credible candidate who offers a credible market-based reform plan to replace TennCare with a fiscally sound alternative that offers those 323,000 poor, sick, old and disabled people some hope.

The first thing that potential candidate ought to do - whoever he or she may be - is pick up the phone and call South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and ask him about his "Medicaid Choice" proposal, which would fundamentally transform the Medicaid system in South Carolina by incorporating greater flexibility, individual control, and personal responsibility.

Greater flexibility, individual control, and personal responsibility are all conservative reforms that TennCare desperately needs (along with many of the incremental reforms that the Bredesen administration has steadfastly refused to even consider). A GOP candidate offering that kind of message would look mighty attractive compared to Bredesen, who found hundreds of millions of dollars to build sports stadums, but can't find any other way to "fix" TennCare but to cut 323,000 poor, sick, old and disabled adults from the rolls.

Some of those 323,000 people won't live until election day, if Bredesen succeeds in slashing them from the TennCare rolls. But of those that do, I can't imagine a one of them voting for Bredesen instead of a GOP candidate with a real TennCare reform plan.

For the GOP in Tennessee, the 2006 governor's race is a glass half filled by Bredesen's incompetence on TennCare, combined with his tax increase last year on the business community and his never-ending stream of condescension toward social conservatives. It's up to the Tennessee Republican Party to pick the right candidate to fill the other half.

UPDATE: TeamGOP has a blistering assessment of Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen.

When Phil Bredesen ran for Governor in 2002, he promised he would use his healthcare industry expertise to fix the ailing state funded health care system, TennCare, without raising taxes. To date Phil Bredesen has been a shining example of absolute failure. After waiting for nearly two and a half years to do something, Bredesen’s only solution appears to be to throw 325,000 children, poor and elderly Tennesseans off the program. While the Court of Appeals ruling this week would allow cuts to go forward, this issue will likely be finally decided in the Courts with a federal judge being the final arbiter of TennCare, instead of the man elected to do that job.

TeamGOP also notes Bredesen is silent on the issue of legislative ethics reform, even though the legislature is wracked by scandal and reform is a major issue on the minds of the people of Tennessee these days.

UPDATE: Matt White sums up the implications of the Daughtrey column:

A liberal makes the case for Bredesen's vulnerability and lays out the communications plan for beating him. To underscore Daughtrey's point, I had an enlightening conversation with a couple of well-placed Democrats who worked hard to get Bredesen elected. They professed that they will not vote for Bredesen in '06, instead opting for an independant or third party candidate that more accurately reflects their views. As one of them put it, with the Right's aversion to Bredesen and his alienation of his Left-leaning base, "Bredesen has no home." That's a tough spot to be in when a Democratic Governor is running for re-election in a red state, with another hotly contested statewide contest on the ballot alongside a gay-marriage amendment.

My fellow Republicans, it's about time we put a horse in this race.