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“I believe the pressure will be so great over the next three or four or five years, on the states that haven’t gone in this direction, that they will end up just where Kentucky is,” Beshear told Alexander Burns of Politico, in the governor's latest appearance in a national publication.
Burns writes, "It’s precisely the message national Democrats are aching to hear, even –
or perhaps especially – from a source as unexpected as a pro-gun,
pro-coal, red-state governor who once endorsed using state tax
incentives to build a creationist theme park."
"For anxious national Democrats who have pined for a white knight in
the health-care reform debate, Steve Beshear is starting to look like
the one they’ve been waiting for – implausible as that development may
be," Burns writes. "Amid a torrent of negative national headlines about the Affordable Care Act, the 69-year-old Kentucky governor – a
canny Southern operator who’s spent his career at arm’s length from the [national] Democratic base – has charged out of Frankfort as a kind of
ambassador-by-default for the controversial law."
Burns says the verdicts on the state and national programs are "far from decided, but Beshear says his mind is entirely made up on
both the merits and the politics of health care. From his perspective,
voters’ opposition to the ACA is driven largely by a sense of anxiety
about how the program may change their lives. If they find a year from
now that the law has left their personal care unchanged, or even
improved it, public opinion could shift quickly."
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