Watching the Karl Rove blitzkrieg on the Sunday morning news shows this week was a little hard to take. Three shows I regularly watch all had Rove as their star interview for the week. That's a lot of Karl to take, early on a Sunday.

Others have pointed out how he defended his remarks about Hillary Clinton being "flawed" as a candidate, and how the right wing has been focusing on Clinton (possibly because she's the one they really, really want to run against next year), but what struck me was Karl's attacks on Hillary on the subject of health care. These attacks will likely not be used just against Hillary, but their broader argument is going to be the GOP's list of talking points against any of the Democratic candidates' health care plans. So even if you're not a Hillary supporter, it is interesting to see this preview of the campaign attack ads which will be run next fall by the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" (VRWC).

Here is Karl talking about a Hillary Clinton campaign ad, from yesterday's Meet The Press:

Most of the ad was devoted to health care, which really to me was a sign of defensiveness. She understands she's got a weakness on this. Hillary Clinton voted against providing seniors with a prescription drug benefit. Hillary Clinton voted against allowing people to save tax free for their out-of-pocket medical expenses. Hillary Clinton voted against medical liability reform so that docs are not forced out of practice by junk lawsuits. She opposes leveling the playing field so that people who pay for health insurance out of their own pocket get the same tax break the big corporations get for providing health care benefits to their employees. She's against allowing people to shop for health insurance across state lines like we do with auto insurance so the consumers would have more choices and there'd be competition to get your business, give you more for less.

She is a person who now—she was opposed to and voted against allowing seniors to have a choice of keeping their current doc and their current health care plan through a private form of Medicare, Medicare Advantage, and now she's voting for penalizing seniors who have those private health care plans through Medicare. This woman's got one idea on health care, which is to let the government do it all, and she's voted against all these very positive reforms which would allow the doctor and the patient to be in charge of health care.

Wow. Hillary and those other evil Democrats are standing in the way of commonsense reforms which would make American health care not unlike paradise on Earth! And Hillary's answer is to "let the government do it all."

Well, actually, no. That's not true at all.

Where to begin?

First, Hillary's health care plan isn't single-payer, government-run, socialist-style, everyone-is-covered health care. Not by a long shot. None of the front three Democratic candidates has proposed that -- what each of them has proposed is much more timid, in one aspect or another. But that doesn't stop Rove from saying it's so.

Let's look at the other things the GOP is going to attempt to run on, if Karl's list is any indication. The prescription drug benefit is already a done deal, so that's not going to be a huge issue in the campaign. Republicans can claim some degree of success for getting this through, although they also have to take responsibility for the portions of it that annoy people: refusing to allow Medicare to use collective bargaining to lower drug prices, and the sheer complexity of the program and the 70 or 80 choices seniors needed to make to enroll in it. This is still a sore point for many who otherwise support the concept.

Next up is: "allowing people to save tax free for their out-of-pocket medical expenses," which can more accurately be described as: "giving a giant tax break to people who are well-off enough to not only already have health insurance, but also have spare money lying around that they can put in an account just in case they get sick later." This doesn't help anyone get health insurance, and gives nothing to the millions of Americans who are basically living paycheck to paycheck.

Tort reform is always a GOP talking point, and in this case they may have a valid argument for reducing the cost of medical liability insurance. But I personally wouldn't trust their "reform" until some Democrats have a chance to vet whatever they're proposing. "Junk lawsuit" is kind of in the eyes of the beholder, and if it was your spouse who died in a botched operation, you might feel differently about limiting court awards against doctors.

I'm not sure exactly what Karl's talking about when he says he wants to "level the playing field," but such talk from the right is usually a stalking horse for "let's give the rich another tax break." Once again, I could support people who are self-employed getting a tax break for health insurance, but wonder if a Democrat would attack the problem differently -- say, by making all medical expenses tax-deductible for everyone, and not just "only what you spend on health care which exceeds seven-and-a-half percent of your income, and only for those people who itemize their deductions," which is what it currently is.

Shopping for insurance across state lines sounds good, too, but I would have to see how much this does exactly what Karl warns about -- giving the federal government more power, and taking it away from the states.

The Medicare Advantage program he's talking about needs reforming because it pays doctors too much money -- which is why Democrats are going to send President Bush a bill which fixes this problem. Bush has already indicated he's going to veto it. So this is a defensive posture the GOP will be taking on the issue during the campaign.

The "doctor and patient to be in charge of health care" which Karl closes with is a code phrase for what the Republicans really want -- for the patient to pay more of their own money out of their own pocket, and have the insurance companies pay less.

But the issue isn't really about any of these individual talking points, the fact is that this is what Republicans are going to be saying during the election. Republicans are terrified (and rightly so) that if Democrats take the White House and larger majorities of Congress next year, there will be some progress and reforms on health care. We may not get to the goal of single-payer, but we can expect that we'll be taking some steps to get toward a fairer system that what we have now. No matter who the Democrat in the White House turns out to be.

But the VRWC isn't going to go down without a fight. They already proved this, back in the 90s with the attack ads they ran against Hillary's health care proposal back then (remember the elderly couple reading the GIANT book of regulations, saying things like: "On page 1,647 it says we can't choose our own doctors"). And they were effective. Hillarycare was defeated.

It isn't all that often that a political tactician at Karl Rove's level gives you a sneak preview of their campaign strategy, but that's exactly what happened on Meet The Press yesterday. Democratic candidates should marshal their arguments against these talking points, because they're going to need them next year.

-- Chris Weigant