The New Republic

In Columbus, Lansing, and Phoenix, Republican governors are making headlines by embracing part of Obamacare. In Washington, Republican lawmakers are making headlines by seeking a new fiscal deal that avoids Pentagon cuts. What do these developments have to do with one another? Everything. They are products of the same, emerging divide in the Republican Party—one that pits conservative ideologues who preach anti-government extremism against some similarly conservative officials who actually have to govern. READ MORE >>

One of the presidential campaign’s most controversial advertisements came from President Obama’s supporters. It was the one about the steelworker who lost his job, after Bain Capital took over, and whose wife eventually died from cancer. As the ad explained, when the steelworker lost his job, he lost his health insurance, too. READ MORE >>

Immigration reform is about to meet health care reform. And the meeting might not go so well.  READ MORE >>

Welcome to The Laboratory, an occastional New Republic series where we celebrate policy solutions that should be getting far more attention than they've gotten so far. READ MORE >>

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association was back in the spotlight on Wednesday—this time to appear before a congressional committee contemplating new gun violence legislation. READ MORE >>

“Death panels” are out. “Sticker shock” is in. For the last few weeks, critics of Obamacare have spent less time on their more hysterical claims and focused, instead, on a practical argument. Because the new health care law mucks up the insurance market with regulations on pricing and benefits, they say, you’re going to pay a lot more for insurance. READ MORE >>

Most people who remember John Calhoun from their history books think of him as the fiery senator from South Carolina who defended the antebellum South and once called slavery a “positive good.” But Calhoun also fancied himself a political philosopher. In the early 19th Century, he wrote a treatise laying out his theory that a small group of states should have the right to block legislation—to exercise a “minority veto”—in order to preserve their way of life. READ MORE >>

Presidents use their inaugural addresses as an opportunity to talk about the future. But when they take the oath of office for a second time, they also use it to talk about the past. READ MORE >>

When President Obama walks down the steps of the Capitol on Monday, preparing to take the Oath of Office, don’t be surprised if he does a little happy dance along the way. READ MORE >>

Sharon Cooper is not a national political figure. She is a state legislator in Georgia, one I happened to encounter at a recent event in Atlanta. But Cooper is also an archetype of Obamacare's newest adversary: the state official fighting health care reform on the ground. These officials can't stop the new law from taking effect. The Supreme Court and the presidential election settled that. But they can interfere with its implementation, potentially denying insurance to millions of poor people across the South and the interior West. To accomplish that, they're wielding some specious arguments.The most critical issue in these places is whether to expand Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor. The federal government provides most of the funding, but states manage the program and have leeway over who can enroll. At the moment, most states limit Medicaid to specific groups of low-income Americans, such as single women with children. Under Obamacare, states are supposed to expand eligibility so that the program includes all low-income Americans. But states don't have to undertake that expansion and lawmakers like Cooper, a Tea Party Republican from the north Atlanta suburbs, are working hard to see that they don't. Because Cooper presides over the Health and Human Services Committee in the state House of Representatives, her opposition makes a difference.Georgians have a lot at stake in this fight. According to projections from the Kaiser Family Foundation, about half a million additional people would become eligible for Medicaid if Georgia opts for the expansion. And if Georgia doesn't? Then most of those half-million people will have no insurance at all. The fate of these people was very much on the agenda at the meeting where I saw Cooper—the "Health Care Unscrambled" policy breakfast, sponsored by a group called Georgians for a Healthy Future. The group believes in health care reform, as did the majority of people at the event. It was to Cooper's credit, I think, that she agreed to appear and explain her views. (I was also speaking there.) But one of her arguments caught my attention, because in more than a decade of covering health policy I'd never heard it before.   READ MORE >>