Congressional Republicans see fighting health-care plan as a key to 2012 victory

WASHINGTON — With their eyes on the 2012 election, Republicans are preparing to maximize conflict with Democrats over health care in the new Congress and minimize potential compromises, GOP strategists, lawmakers and lobbyists say.

That strategy is setting the stage for stalemate on Capitol Hill over the next two years as the president and senior congressional Democrats dig in to defend their signature achievement.

Republican leaders and strategists believe a renewed battle over health care will help the party expand its electoral gains and drive President Obama from the White House.

"Republicans have successfully challenged the health-care legislation once," said Republican strategist Frank Luntz. "They'll do it again."

Luntz, a leading architect of Republicans' successful campaign to cast the health-care legislation as a "Washington takeover," said Democrats will suffer further if they try to defend the law. "Democrats have more to lose," he said.

In practical terms, the GOP approach is likely to mean little congressional input over how the law is implemented. The administration will retain broad authority to refine the law on its own, working with businesses, consumer groups, health-care providers and state regulators, health-care experts say.

While lawmakers deadlock on Capitol Hill, GOP leaders already have a target list of Democratic senators who are up for re-election in two years in traditionally Republican states such as Missouri, Montana, Nebraska and Virginia.

"The next couple of years, in some ways, become about the 2012 elections," Republican health-care lobbyist Dean Rosen said last week at an Alliance for Health Reform briefing in Washington.

The GOP tactics mirror those deployed by Democrats after their 2006 electoral sweep.

Then, Democratic House and Senate leaders who had won majorities on a promise to challenge President George W. Bush's Iraq war strategy bullied congressional Republicans by repeatedly forcing them to vote to support the unpopular war.

The Democrats' legislative campaign ultimately collapsed. Bush used his veto pen to block legislation mandating troop withdrawals. Within a year, the Bush administration's effort to stabilize Iraq with a troop surge showed signs of success.

Many Democrats believe they, too, will be vindicated as the public sees more of the benefits of the new health-care law.

Whit Ayres, a longtime GOP pollster, warned that Republicans also risk a backlash if voters perceive them as more interested in scoring political points than in responding to voters' concerns.

"There is no particular love for the Republican Party in the electorate," he said at a recent forum. "Republicans are going to have to earn (voters') support and earn their respect, and the way you do that is by governing responsibly."

But most of the health-care law's major benefits — including its guarantee of coverage to all Americans — do not go into effect until 2014. And there are few signs the law is getting more popular.

In the interim, Republicans, who believe the law was crucial to their electoral gains, are increasingly confident they can showcase its shortcomings and further weaken support for Democrats.

"They are looking for ways to be very aggressive," said Michael Franc, who works closely with congressional Republicans as head of government relations for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

GOP leaders have indicated they intend votes to defund the law and excise controversial parts such as cuts in Medicare spending and a new mandate requiring Americans to get health insurance.

Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican who retired in 2007, said Republicans could help correct flaws in the sweeping new law.

"The reality is that the law will largely remain intact. That being the case, it is important that it be made to work as effectively as possible," Frist said. "And there are lots of things that can be fixed or modified by working together."

Even supporters of the overhaul believe there may be a need to modify requirements on large employers to provide coverage, loosen restrictions on insurers and ease pressure on fiscally strained states as they expand their Medicaid programs.

But Democrats already have rejected making major changes. After the midterm election, Obama said he did not believe voters wanted the two sides to "relitigate arguments that we had over the last two years" over health care.

And Frist and others said Republicans have almost no incentive to work with Democrats, especially after Obama pushed through the legislation by using parliamentary tactics that circumvented GOP opposition.

"There is very little risk for Republican leadership," Frist said. "The American people don't like the bill. ... And everything that happens in health care is now owned by President Obama. When rates go up, when states have to cut education to pay for health care, it will be seen as a product of the health-care law."