In our Washington Post column [1] on Monday, Paul Goldman and I took up the matter of the WaPo’s Sunday editorial [2] in which House Speaker Bill Howell was cast as the new leader of Massive Resistance for leading the House’s opposition to Medicaid expansion.
Credit to the Post, and especially to our editor, for publishing it. And along the way, Virginians learn a little history that, until Monday, was known only to a handful of people:
…one of the authors [Goldman], unlike anyone else writing regularly in Virginia, has actual front-line experience helping to overcome the last remnants of Byrd’s machine politics. He ran legendary anti-Byrd fighter Henry Howell’s successful campaign to become the first Democrat not backed by white supremacist leaders to win the party’s gubernatorial nomination. He likewise ran Doug Wilder’s historic campaigns, permanently putting Virginia on a path to a new, inclusive politics.
Henry Howell bitterly complained to the author about The Post not helping him as he thought it should to defeat one-time massive resistance leader Mills Godwin, the last Byrd segregationist governor. Godwin narrowly won their dramatic gubernatorial campaign shootout in 1973. Would it have been fair if Henry Howell’s supporters said the paper was no different from those who supported massive resistance?
Of course not.
We go on to point out the yawning gap between the Resistors and foes of Medicaid expansion:
Massive resistance was aimed at denying ALL African American children equal educational opportunity. It grew from opposition to obeying the Supreme Court and U.S. Constitution.
The fight over Medicaid expansion, on the other hand, is an issue created by the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare. The justices simultaneously gave each state the option to refuse to participate in any future expansion of the Medicaid program. This legal wrinkle, in turn, forced McAuliffe to get General Assembly approval to add nearly 400,000 needy Virginians lacking health insurance to the state’s Medicaid rolls.
Speaker Howell is therefore not “massively resisting” Medicaid — quite the opposite. Led by Del. John O’Bannon (R-Henrico), a highly respected physician, Republicans continue to back the program. But they have their own alternatives for additional coverage.
What the Post wrote was evidence of frustration. Been there. But because the Post is also the state’s largest paper, the consequences of its frustration will linger:
…the editorial will rightly be seen as mean-spirited and do far more to damage The Post’s reputation than Howell’s. Most important, it won’t help those Virginians who need it most.
But it does harden the GOP position. Being lumped together with racists tends to do that.