Over on the main site, Jeffrey Lord
argues that conservatives would not be honoring Ted Kennedy
by letting the Democrats ram through a health care bill. Another
point to consider is that this is not the approach Kennedy
himself usually used in passing important legislation, especially
on health care. He preferred to find at least a small number of
Republicans in order to pass an incremental bill in a bipartisan
way -- see Kennedy-Kassebaum and his partnership with Orrin Hatch
on SCHIP.
That's not to say Ted Kennedy wouldn't have preferred the
biggest-government health care plan possible, or even that his
incremental pieces of legislation were good policy. But people
talking about the Ted Kennedy way are ignoring a lot of what made
him not just a liberal ideologue but also a successful
legislator.
