This should be a cardinal rule for any conservative candidate: If the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board thinks you're making a wise policy decision, immediately reconsider.
Medicaid Expansion. HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
There's no need to quote any of this editorial as you've heard it all before. A 'conservative' member of the GOP who's been the beneficiary of relatively high taxpayer funding in relation to expenditures takes a "reasonable" position regarding expanding Medicaid and accepting the Billions of dollars in "free money" being offered up by the Federal Government.
In this case it's Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack, deemed a "conservative firebrand" by the gang of fools at the editorial board who refuses to be blinded by extreme ideology. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Such is the power of messaging, where a majority of people are starting to believe that these Federal dollars are created by the money fairy and will have no long-term repercussions. There's no mention of the fact that the manna from Heaven is temporary, and will soon mold and sour (or go away entirely) as did the sustenance the Lord provided to the Hebrews on their journey out of Egypt.
And what then?
Supporters of the plan assure voters that the funds will be "extended". That the temporary nature really isn't and that Congress will "surely" act to make the additional funds permanent. But, if they don't? Then Texas is going to be staring into a permanent budget hole and will be forced to radically alter its revenue confiscation structure in order to fund it. Because kicking all of those Texans off the Medicare rolls once the Federal funding goes away is not consistent with the incumbent protection plan that is our current electoral system.
It's not that Radack and Emmett are bad people. Far from it. I've met both gentlemen and they seem like devoted family men, genuinely nice, no better or no worse than anyone else, albeit with slightly better suits, and man-scaping than most.
The problem is they, like many other in the GOP, are not movement conservatives and are really just conservatives of convenience when it forwards their political ambitions. In this, they are not alone. The pandering and equivocation of politicians are part of the reason why Trump is so popular, and it might just be the key to the Texas Democratic resurgence, in the short term at least.
This is not to say that the medical system in America right now is anything less than a nightmare. It's an over-regulated mess whose cost structure is way out of line, and whose billing practices are a mess, and that's being kind.
The problem is that no one in the GOP seems to have an understanding what a workable solution is or, at least, they haven't made it public. In most cases they are content to prop up the ADA as a whipping-boy for fund-raising purposes, without actually taking any meaningful action against it.
For local GOP officials this is creating a problem. Because Emmett, Radack and Co. have a system to run, and they really don't want to make meaningful change independently because that would require a LOT of sweat equity and would require some original thought of the type that would be controversial and, in the case of Radack at least, potentially result in losing an election. From that perspective the natural default is to support more money coming in, and let the folks that come next worry about the blow-back.
It is becoming increasingly clear that momentum for Medicaid expansion is building in Texas and I have no doubt that it will eventually come. I believe that it's coming to Texas will be the canary in the coal mine for the collapse of the Texas GOP.
What follows that will be interesting to see. Hopefully it is better at the task of messaging than is the current harbor for those of a conservative lean.
