Chris Good is right to note Bob Bennett's casual use of the word "universal" when talking about health care. I'd take it a step further, though: The same language was laced into Bobby Jindal's SOTU-response, as well. "Republicans believe in a simple principle," he said. "No American should have to worry about losing their health care coverage, period. We stand for universal access to affordable health care coverage." Te meetings of "the Anti-Universal Coverage Club" are getting lonely, in other words. Jindal also opened with a jab at the insurance companies. "When they arrived in Baton Rouge, my mother was already four-and-a-half-months pregnant," he recalled. "I was what folks in the insurance industry now call a pre-existing condition." Does that matter? It's hard to say. Rhetorically, the GOP has staked out a very narrow corner of opposition. Last week, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Mike Enzi, Orrin Hatch, and Judd Gregg -- essentially, all the Senate Republicans with jurisdiction over health reform, and McConnell -- co-signed a letter to President Obama. I've obtained a copy, and it's up for download here. They draw two lines in the sand. First, they warn against using the budget reconciliation process to pass heath care. Doing so would "make it difficult to gain broad bipartisan support" and "do a disservice to this important issue." Substantively, they fear a public insurance option. "Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition," they say. "Ultimately, we would be left with a single government-run plan controlling the market." That leaves, of course, plenty of room for eventual argument and obstruction. But there's a caution worth recognizing here, too. Republicans do not want to begin in opposition. They have begun this debate by claiming that their objections lie at the margins of health reform, not at its core.
