Jonah Goldberg offers a helpful answer in his latest column at National Review Online. The subheadline offers the short version: “Hint: It isn’t the Republican one.”

[Bernie] Sanders got 15 co-sponsors — including some Democratic senators with presidential ambitions. The fact that so many contenders signed on to a bill that, if enacted, would throw 100 million Americans off their employer-provided health care and cost taxpayers an estimated $32 trillion over a decade revealed just how far to the left the Democratic party has moved.

And yet, to listen to Democrats and many of the journalists who love them, you’d think it was the Republican proposal that’s extreme. “In reality, Graham–Cassidy is the opposite of moderate,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pronounced. “It contains, in exaggerated and almost caricature form, all the elements that made previous Republican proposals so cruel and destructive.”

The news section of the Times was more even-handed: “Medicare for All or State Control: Health Care Plans Go to Extremes.”

Are they really both “extreme”? Graham–Cassidy ’s chief goal is to pare back the federalization of health-care policy by getting rid of the individual and employer insurance mandates and letting governors waive out of some regulations. More important, it block-grants Medicaid — a long-sought dream for those wanting to get a handle on out-of-control spending and debt. …

… Graham–Cassidy is very close to the kind of legislation we would have ended up with if Republicans had an idea of what they wanted from the get-go and the Democrats were interested in compromise. But we live in a time when extremism is defined as not getting everything you want.