I don’t get this. I’m starting to agree more with Frum. I’m not wild about this bill. But this should have been a victory for Republicans, not a defeat.

This bill is significantly less socialist than Obama and Democrats promised during their campaigns. Liberals wanted single payer. They didn’t get it, and got beaten back to the public option. They didn’t get that either, and got beaten back to private mandates. (Which was originally a Republican idea.) Shouldn’t that be seen as a win?

Originally it was going to be trillions and not be paid for in the slightest. It got beaten back to billions. Then it was beaten back to actually cutting the deficit, even if the CBO numbers were a bit sketchy. And a big factor in how they accomplished that was by trimming waste in Medicare. Something Republicans have campaigned on for decades. Should that be seen as a win?

I could go on. How about the provision in the bill that forces Congressmen to use insurance bought from the new exchanges? A Republican talking point that they caved on. How about the ability for states to opt out of the private mandate? (You know, the part these lawsuit-happy attorney generals evidently never read.) Another Republican talking point they caved on. I could go on, to over 200 similar Republican amendments they were forced to adopt.

If Republicans had played their cards right, they could be touting these as major wins. Especially for a party so strongly in the minority. “Look at how effectively we stopped this from being even worse. We’re good at this. You should vote for us.”

But no. By saying that Obama was Satan incarnate, and the passage of this bill would destroy the entire country and spark World War III, they screwed themselves, because you can’t negotiate with Hitler. (Even when you did. Successfully.) By characterizing it as a totalitarian scheme worthy of armed insurrection, they’ve left themselves nowhere left to go. They’ve essentially castrated their own elected representatives. As Charles puts it, their entire party policy, straight through to the floor of Congress, has officially become hijacked by the wackos.