As those who have watched the roll-out of the U.S. Senate candidacy of Republican businessman Mike McFadden know, it has been a candidacy almost devoid of concrete issue positions.
Part of the strategy is to introduce himself as a nice guy who loves his wife and kids, specially coaching his kids’ teams, and thinks America should be a land of opportunity. Part of the rollout has been a series of short videos called “Meet Mike” and “A Minute with Mike.” I previously extracted what little substance I could from the videos, but it wasn’t much other than the nice guy/family man stuff. (I summarized the videos and embedded them all in this post.)
None of those videos even pretended to be about policy stuff or the votes he would cast if he made it to the Senate. Until Monday that is, when the latest video in the “Minute with Mike” series debuted and was devoted to the very central 2014 issue of health care and the Republican demand for something better than Obamacare. McFadden long-ago joined the ranks of Republicans who want to “repeal and replace” the abominable Obamacare, but has not meaningfully described what the replacement should be other than a few nebulous adjectives like “market-based,” although he has said the replacement plan will “help, not hurt, all Americans.”
Now that he has decided to devote a video to the topic, it turns out that he still cannot even hint at how the replacement would work. Below is the full text and the video itself. By the way, I have requested an interview with McFadden and, if it occurs, will give him every opportunity to fill in the blanks. OK, here’s the full script of the latest video:
We have a big issue with our health care system in America. I’ve run a business for 20 years and the fastest growing line-item on my income statement was health care. And hardworking families around America. The fastest growing item on their family balance sheets or income statements is health care. So we have to address health care. We need to fix it. But the unaffordable care act is not the solution.
I believe in limited but effective government. And the nationalization of one-sixth of the economy is neither limited and I guarantee you, it won’t be effective. It floors me that we would kick this problem to Washington as opposed to dealing with here in Minnesota. It’s gonna be too expensive. We can’t afford it. And this uncertainty about health care, and the complexity around the national regulations about health care, are strangling small and medium-sized businesses. Those are the businesses that I worked with and they’re the ones that are the job creators in this country. And the uncertainty is really, really problematic.
And here’s the video:
