It should come as no surprise that Bill Kristol's reaction to the passage of health care reform is ungracious and tactical. After all, his "thinking" on this issue has been non-stop base and cheesy since he wrote his infamous memo advising Republicans to deny Bill Clinton a victory on health care in December 1993. The remarkable thing about that memo is that it remained the sole Republican strategy on health care 17 years later--well past its sell-by date--squelching the very valuable, and creative, thinking that had been emanating from the Republicans on health care since Stuart Butler's Heritage Foundation plan. (And no, Paul Ryan's crashingly radical plan to gut Medicare doesn't count as creative thinking.)
The remarkable key to Kristol's advice is the acknowledgment, in 1993, that the passage of health care reform would be a victory for Bill Clinton. Kristol thought it would be bad politics to grant Clinton the popularity that would come with passage.
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