Yes, Paul LePage Is A Little Bit Worse Than Susan Collins-- A VERY Little Bit Worse

Yesterday MoveOn.org released a new set of polls conducted by PPP from red and purple states. In all seven states-- Maine, Kansas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Florida, Kentucky and Virginia-- large percentages of likely voters thought that their state should accept federal Medicaid expansion dollars. The surveys found that voters were significantly less likely to vote for Republican candidates who oppose Medicaid expansion and that if Democrats play it right-- a big if-- the Republicans' concerted Medicaid Blockade could cost them dearly in November. Let's look at Maine, where there are two important statewide races, one for governor and one for a U.S. Senate seat. In both cases there are Republican incumbents who have been unfriendly towards the idea of increasing health insurance for working families, Governor Paul LePage and Senator Susan Collins.

LePage, an outright teabagger, and Collins, a self-described "moderate," are supposedly from opposite ends of the Republican spectrum. But each has endorsed the other and each-- albeit using different tones and strategies-- has worked to prevent Mainers from getting health insurance coverage. The PPP survey of likely voters, even without an prompting about who supports which policies, showed a substantial lead for Democrat Mike Michaud, one of only three actual moderates in the right-wing Blue Dog caucus. If the election were held today, this is how it would turn out:

• Mike Michaud (D)- 44%
• Paul LePage ®- 37%
• Eliot Cutler (I)- 14%
• not sure- 5%

When informed that Maine is eligible to receive new federal funding to pay for health care through Medicaid, 57% of likely voters liked the idea and only 35% didn't. When informed that LePage vetoed accepting the funds to expand Medicaid, 23% of voters said that that wouldn't impact their decision on whether to vote for him or not. But 30% said it would make them more likely to vote for him and 45% said it would make them less likely to vote for him.

As for Collins, she was quietly lobbying her allies in the legislature to vote against Medicaid expansion, although she tried making believe she doesn't get involved with "state issues." More publicly, she helped torpedo the public option during the debate over the Affordable Care Act, which she later filibustered along with Ted Cruz, Jim Inhofe, Mike Lee and all the radical right GOP senators.

This morning, the progressive Democrat running for the seat Collins has been in for way too long, Shenna Bellows, gave us an indication of what a very different set of priorities she would be working on if she were to win the November election: "Some policy decisions are a matter of life and death. Medicaid expansion is one of them. Tens of thousands of Mainers continue to delay medically necessary care to treat cancer and other life threatening conditions because of lack of access to health insurance. The stories are heartbreaking, and the data is clear. Because of Republican obstructionism, up to 157 Mainers could die this year due to the denial of Medicaid benefits. It doesn't have to be this way. Universal health care would benefit the economy, public health and human rights. It's time that we put our efforts in ensuring that all people have access to affordable, high quality health care."

Sally Kohn, writing for the Daily Beast, made it clear that Republicans nationally-- just like LePage and Collins in Maine-- "are actively, single-handedly blocking health coverage for 5 million Americans in 24 states.  One academic study suggests that of those 5 million, 10,000 Americans will die this year alone due to lack of insurance.  The Medicaid expansion is the law of the land, it’s already paid for, and 5 million more Americans would be getting coverage if Republican politicians hadn’t taken it away because of petty partisanship.  Largely because Republicans want to spite President Obama on a key piece of his namesake legislation, thousands of Americans may die."

Meanwhile Obamacare overall is getting more popular. Already, the components of the law were incredibly well-received and polls showed that a significant percentage of people saying they “opposed” Obamacare actually think the law doesn’t go far enough-- as in, they support an even more progressive solution. Now, as the news comes that over 7 million Americans enrolled for insurance through the exchanges, polls show that even absolute support for Obamacare is on the rise. Obamacare is now not only more popular than President Obama (47 percent versus 46 percent favorability) but the law is wildly more popular than Congressional Republicans (only 18 percent favorability).

And as the law’s positive effects continue to spread, running against Obamacare will be increasingly self-destructive.  Of course, that won’t stop the “kamikaze caucus.”  Witness John Boehner rushing to correct the record when Matt Drudge ran a story about Republicans working to expand Obamacare. Republicans apparently don’t want the American people even wrongly thinking their party is actually trying to get people more coverage and care.

The take-away for voters is clear: Democrats are actively working to provide affordable care and insurance to Americans, while Republicans are actively working to deny coverage to Americans by restricting Medicaid and attacking Obamacare in general. Polls show Republicans are already on the losing side of this issue. As voters hear more and more stories of Americans able to afford a heart transplant or get their cancer detected early thanks to Obamacare, versus stories about rural hospitals closing and Americans not getting care they need because Republicans blocked Medicaid expansion, voters will even more emphatically support the Democrats.

I should note that in this morning's Bangor Daily News, reporter Mike Tipping isn't blaming Collins, per se, for stopping Medicaid expansion, but laying it right in the laps of her allies at ALEC… and on the Koch brothers.

Fredette, Duprey, and most of their fellow Republicans in the Maine House and Senate have so far been unwilling to join Democrats in sufficient numbers to overcome a gubernatorial veto and accept federal health care funding made available through the Affordable Care Act to expand health care coverage in Maine. Enough of them have stuck with Governor Paul LePage despite the popularity of the issue and its economic, budgetary and health care benefits that even a compromise bill advanced by Republican Senator Roger Katz faces an uncertain legislative future following its likely veto by LePage today.

Why is this the case, when Republicans have been willing to ignore the increasingly-marginalized LePage on other issues, including rejecting his budget recommendations for two years in a row? The Facebook post by Duprey, which may seem at first to be just one more inconsequential social media interaction, actually points us toward the answer to that question.

Bragdon, a former Maine legislator, former head of the conservative Maine Heritage Policy Center (MHPC) and former co-chair of LePage’s transition team, now heads a Florida-based organization called the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA). His office in Naples is a nexus in a national network of conservative groups and causes funded by large corporations and some of the wealthiest conservative donors in the country, including billionaire oil magnates and arch-libertarians Charles and David Koch. The Kochs and their close allies are responsible for creating and underwriting much of the current right-wing establishment. (For instance, they sit on ALEC’s corporate board and are likely responsible for a significant amount of its funding.) They’ve spent millions fighting health care reform and the debate over Medicaid expansion in Maine is a convenient battlefield in their wider war against the Affordable Care Act and any government involvement in ensuring access to health coverage.

…It’s the backing of these powerful national groups that has likely made the difference in allowing LePage to secure critical Republican votes in favor of his policy of refusing federal health care funding and denying coverage for 70,000 Mainers.

In pursuit of this goal, LePage and his national allies have engaged in a remarkably cynical campaign which has seen the large-scale rejection of political and policy reality and the creation and dissemination of new “facts” that more comfortably fit with their ideology. As the Bangor Daily News recently editorialized, it’s like something "straight out of 1984."

…If Governor LePage maintains just enough minority support to uphold his veto, these national networks of conservative organizations and activists will deserve much of the credit. They won’t, however, be the ones who have to bear the political consequences. No matter what their biased polling purports to show, the public is broadly supportive of expansion and progressives are already preparing to use any rejection of federal funding as a key issue in November’s House and Senate elections.

Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Congressman Mike Michaud has also made expansion a cornerstone of his campaign against LePage, repeatedly saying it’s the first issue he’ll address as Governor.

Maine Republicans shouldn’t be surprised if they face an electoral backlash this November. After all, the last time they followed Bragdon on a piece of health care policy they saw the same result. In 2011, legislation was hashed out in closed-door meetings between Bragdon, key GOP legislators and insurance company lobbyists that struck down consumer protections in Maine’s insurance market. MHPC experts told the Republican caucus that it would lower premiums, but the real result was immediate insurance rate hikes for small businesses all over the state, in some cases by triple digits. The rate hike bill, as it came to be known, ended up being one of the central issues Democrats used to win back control of the Maine House and Senate in 2012.

Perhaps Republicans think the the result of the current debate will be different. Maybe they believe the biased polls, or perhaps they thing the deep-pocketed donors, including the Koch brothers, who have bankrolled this effort by ALEC, FGA and AFP will come to their electoral defense during the coming campaign.

Whatever the eventual legislative results or electoral consequences, what’s clear right now is that the worst kind of corporate, money-driven, right-wing politics have come to Maine in full force and that federally-funded health care coverage for 70,000 Mainers may be the latest casualty in a national, ideological crusade. Don’t be fooled. The rejection of federal funding so far in Maine isn’t just the result of the stubborn intransigence of one tea party governor, it’s part of a well-funded, well-coordinated campaign to impose on all of us the political views of a wealthy, conservative few.

If you'd like to help make a difference, you can contribute to Shenna Bellows' grassroots campaign here at the Blue America ActBlue page. There's no such thing as a contribution that's "too small."