Posted on 03/04/2010 3:11:41 AM PST by kingattax
'Hey, passing health- care reform may cost us the House or even the Senate this fall — but we'll get control back eventually, and the Republicans will never be able to repeal it."
That's what some Democrats are telling each other to justify the final push for ObamaCare. It might even be true — but it might also sentence the party to minority status for decades. Here's why:
ObamaCare isn't Medicare: Medicare's been popular since before it passed. It's an enormous boon to those it serves, at little noticeable cost to everyone else. "Health-care reform" will take a lot away from a lot of people — forcing them to change plans, hiking their taxes and more.
So passing ObamaCare will create a large, popular movement for repeal that Medicare never faced.
Fine, repeal will be even harder than passing the reform — and Republicans haven't had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in living memory.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Because all of his pronouncements are subject to sudden change, President Obama, who decried the use of reconciliation on much smaller matters than this, has decided reconciliation is the perfect vehicle by which to tell the American public to shut up and take what he’s giving them (language warning), and also take command over 17% of the economy.
And he’s doing it, all while pretending not to know that America is saying “no.”
Is that just Obama taking a stab at some plausible deniability? Or is he one of those guys who thinks a “no” is a coy “yes;” the sort of creep who sweet talks you past where you wanted to go, and then sneers, “you know you want it.”
As Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (who increasingly reminds me of someone who once got a laugh at another’s expense and thus considers himself a wit) declared today, “whatever it takes to get health care done,”, President Obama put the exclamation point to the sentiment by handing some judge robes to the brother of an undecided Democrat. If the timing of the appointment is merely co-incidental, you’d think the president would be attuned to the bad optics of it, but Obama doesn’t really care what anything thinks about what he does.
All of that has left Dan Riehl very, very angry. I mean, way beyond Marvin-the-Martian angry:
This neophyte, this joke we have in the White House has absolutely no idea of the force and the rage he is about to unleash on him and his entire political party. If there are not enough responsible adults left within his party to rein in this accidental, affirmative action jerk, this self-styled, extremely flawed little man, then his party is worthless to America. It deserves to be marginalized electorally and, ultimately, utterly destroyed, before being relegated to the dung heap of history with the rest of the marxist, socialist clowns Americans have dispatched before.
Reconciliation for this disaster of a destructive health care bill I doubt anyone on the Hill can fully define means all out war. The only question remaining is, whose side are you on?
Ehhhhmmm…yeeah. That’s…pretty…damned…mad. Obama campaigned promising that he would both “unify” and “remake” America. Seems he meant it, for better or worse. But many moderate Democrats, Independents and even some Conservatives thought Obama meant we’d all have a cookout and work on fine-tuning the American engine and polishing the fenders between bites of potato salad.
They apparently did not realize he meant a complete overhaul and redesign.
Those of us who did should not be acting too surprised, at this point.
Glenn Reynolds is concerned:
I’ve never seen Dan Riehl this angry. Is he an outlier, or a leading indicator? The Dems had better hope it’s the former. . .
I don’t the Democrats give a damn about it, they haven’t for a while, which tells me that they have their eyes on something so vast that the rest of us -riding on the back of the beast and thus unable to gauge its proportions- can’t even see the totality of it.
Whether Riehl is an outlier is a good question, though. My readers and penpals are mostly temperate sorts who are not quick to go all Yosemite Sam and a-haulin’ out their rifles. But I actually have had a few emails indicating that the Looney Tunes White House and the Democrats are crossing a line they ought not cross, if they’d prefer not to test the action/reaction theory.
VIDEO AT LINK...
Undoubtedly, there are some Americans who are feeling as angry as Reihl. There are people out there -you can read them in political forums and the comments sections of most internet-posted news columns- who are literally thisclose to saying, “the government has abandoned America and its precepts; they are the outliers, they are the ones bending the nation to the breaking point, and they must be stopped.”
By what means? Who knows.
People are feeling not just “fooled” but betrayed and disrespected by their elected leaders, who are supposed to be their servants. No one likes feeling that way. Many Conservatives and Independents sense that their hirees are out of control and dictating to them from on high; to them, America feels like a college campus occupied by a bunch of spoiled adolescents who are alternately calling their tuition-paying parents “stupid and bourgeois” or “stupid and oppressed,” depending on the day. They are bristling at the disdain and condescension they sense from their government. In his speech today, Obama seemed one rhetorical flourish away from saying, “don’t you know who I am?” And the sense I am getting is that Americans are ready to say, in return, “don’t you know who we are, who hired you?”
Centers are definitely not holding. The more cynical side of me, which I am trying to keep tamped down, even wonders if some in DC are counting on the threat of violence occurring, as a means to yet another end.
I took a “retreat” day, today; spent the whole day in prayer, reading, contemplation. Retreating from the daily hash of news and spin, I came back to “the world” more and more convinced that illusions are spinning like mad all around us, and that the only way to defeat them is to hold on to what we know is true, and not get sucked into a whirling vortex of emotion. Emotion is always the exploitable bugbear that lets things slip further out of control than they should; emotion is what Democrats seem to count on, and what conservatives are increasingly falling prey to, as they feel their principles are being dismissed, and the nation’s precepts are being steamrollered.
In an address to congress, Abraham Lincoln said that in order to save our nation, we had to “disenthrall ourselves” of our passions. That, of course, only works if all sides agree to do it. Nobody is agreeing to nuthin’ in 21st Century America.
My hope is that Riehl is an outlier. I suspect, though, that if he is, he won’t be for very long.
Related: Private Sector Innovation in Health Care
actually, if dems use reconciliaton/nuclear option to pass it, then gop should be able to undo it using the same process, ie 50 votes in senate + gop VP.
I hear the talk of repeal, but won’t Obama just veto a bill to repeal healthcare, and if he does, will we have the majority needed (67 votes) to override a veto...I think not.
Better this thing doesn’t go through and to work now to kill it, than to be like McConnell and say, “We’ll repeal it.” IMO, if it passes, the GOP are planning on using the repeal slogan as a political “hammer” in 2010 and that will work...but repeal will not be easy, at least not during Obama’s term in the WH.
The DEMS are overlooking a two key elements that are there underdoing.
As already discussed:
1. Americans want useful options. Medicare provides options and Obamacare takes reduces options.
2. Americans don’t trust their governement now. All of the DEMS assumptiosn are based on the fact that Americans do trust their government and, in fact, want more of it in their lives.
To furthur underscore the point, IF this passes, and WHEN conservatives+republicans are in a significant majority, THEN I urge them to NOT overturn -14Bamacare with what they have, 60%, 65% etc... but to have just enough of the most conservative vote against overturning while stating the reason: "We want this overturned with ONLY 50%+1, not a single vote over... NOT ONE".
I think one option ought to be an armed march on Washington.
Now, I don’t mean armed with automatic weapons or even pistols. I mean armed with the traditional weapons that Americans use for hunting: shotguns and dad’s old deer rifle. And I would not propose USING them - just arming ourselves to demonstrate the depth of commitment.
If not an armed march, then an unarmed one that does not leave town.
Funny.....I remember the same thing being said in 2004.
I am Sick of hearing this crap,you can bet the house if this Obamacare passes by next November if you ask the Morons are you going to vote against the democrat because of Obamacare they will say Obama what?
This is wishful thinking, everyone still with all the Ranting does not realize the Power of the Media Propoganda machine.These communists will be in such Euphoria for finally achieving their lifelong goal of Destroying the United States of America,all their brain dead followers will celebrate right through the elections.
If there is a time to fight it is now and where are the Marches ,the Protests, that load was shot months ago
No one will get free government health care for four years while being required to buy health care under penalty of IRS fines for not buying it in 2011.
Sometimes you can only spin so much. I don’t think they will be able to spin this. If passed, look for the Dow to hit 5,000 and maybe lower. Tax receipts to the federal government to fall much further and unemployment to officially hit 16%.
My two cents.
This can be repealed, since only the taxes begin for the first 3 years, not the benefits.
Reconciliation is only being spoken of to give some cover to wavering Democrats in the House who may vote for it.
I dunno... I just don’t buy any prediction that says Party X will be in the wilderness for a decade or for a generation... Contexts keep changing and voters usually do not have long-term memory, so it is very difficult to predict something would last very long. Only several years ago some people wrote about “Republican permanent majority”, and surely not long time ago, it became “Democrat permanent majority”.
If they succeed in getting HC by or Amnesty later they face 2 or 4 years “in the desert.” After that they will be back big time. If only HC then every future election after HC is in force and operating will be contested on who is more compassionate with HC or who can run it more efficiently. The Social Democrats will win almost all of the time in that game because they designed the game. With Amnesty it becomes pure one party rule until the Spanish speakers hive off to form the Mexican National Party, thence it will be a perennial contest between the Spanish speaking socialists and the Social Democrats until the country is split and the Historically Spanish areas are “returned” to Mexico.
Man I am right with you there. All this blogging is interesting and informative, but also passive. I e-mail my congressmen often, but the idiots from Michigan are not listening (especially that brain-dead commie moron Stabenow). We need a HUGE march in DC to show our strong opposition to this hostile takeover of our health care. Hints of rebellion and sabotage should be clearly stated in our signage. The working class in this country have had enough of carrying the LOSERS (red, yellow, black, and white). It stops here, no matter what it takes.
This needs to be stopped now. Repeal is a fantasy. It might be a good talking point in a re-election campaign, but it will never actually happen.
These things must be dismantled, brick by painstaking brick.
Thanks- I love that graphic.
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