How Ted Cruz Won the Shutdown Drama

American Thinker ^ | November 3, 2013 | http://www.americanthinker.com/jonathon_moseley/

[Cincinatus' Wife]

.......Skeptics ask: What was achieved by Ted Cruz with his 21-hour filibuster against ObamaCare on the floor of the U.S. Senate? What did Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives accomplish by trying to delay or defund ObamaCare?

To start with, Obama's nice-guy mask slipped, letting average voters see Obama's snarl. Talk show host Roger Hedgecock started calling the President "Barack Obey-Me" due to his arrogant behavior. The mask slipped because Republicans knocked it aside. Obama's shutdown "theater of the absurd" revealed a vindictive, petty tyrant in conflict with his political image, carefully created for superficial "hope and change" voters.

Second, Ted Cruz made it very clear that the ObamaCare disaster is the Democrats' baby. Sen. Cruz, Sen. Mike Lee, and other Republicans succeeded in sharply separating the Republican Party from then-looming disasters, now upon us. So now Democrats own this mess lock, stock, and barrel. Failing to distance the Grand Old Party from ObamaCare on the eve of its disastrous roll-out would have been foolish.

Third, the strategy of conservative Republicans always incorporated a "Second Act" that must follow whenever ObamaCare inevitably fell apart. Cruz anticipated that the American people would realize eventually: "Holy Cow! Those Republicans were right!" In fact, Cruz seized on a perfect opportunity, like a tennis ball hanging in mid-air in perfect position for a tennis pro to smash it effortlessly over the net. But the impacts are still in the process of unfolding.

.......However, it is absurd to view the situation as only a snapshot, viewing only one limited moment in time. A war is not won in a single skirmish. Cruz's critics narrowly view the shutdown as only one single event, not as part of an overall strategy......

[Gaffer]

But the impacts are still in the process of unfolding

Here's hoping that it is an electoral tsunami (we used to say tidal wave in my day but half of today's people wouldn't understand that now).

It is difficult for me to believe that there are, or could be, out there who are so oblivious to what Obama and his ilk are doing. Myself, I'm just one big ball of seething, angry, anxious voter RAGE who cannot wait to punch the ballot against a RINO or two in the primaries.

[eartick]

Drama????

Me thinks it was not a drama but a showdown of wits and Cruz and Lee were the winner by far. Odogdung can not hold a candle on smarts compared to these two. People say Odogdung is smart....I say BS...maybe the puppet masters are smart but not Odogdung.

They not only out foxed Odogdung, but the ones in the Republican party as well that were calling for their heads.

Cruz stood up to the entrinched Republican establishment and did what he said he would do when he ran for office. For this, I will always have respect for the man.

If he tires of Washington, he can come home to Texas and be President of this great State.

Now, we need to rid Washington of Cornyn.....

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Nov 3, 2013 - Frustrated media groups petition gov't for ObamaCare info"A slew of media organizations have petitioned the government to release ObamaCare data that the White House has refused to make public.......Some media outlets have asked for internal e-mail communications between key administration officials on the implementation of ObamaCare...."

[mosesdapoet]

No one can tell me that there weren’t GOPE (GOP Elite Snobs) insiders who weren’t well aware that amonst other things that the infamous website wouldn’t be operational at the start up date. But kept it to themselves because they didn’t want the upstart tea partyers to spread the word. That might have killed this thing from the get go.

While the Romney camp didn’t use any researched material in the disasterous 2012 campaign on AHCA that don’t mean they didn’t research what was in there. If they deny researching it then they’re really incompetent.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Nov. 2, 2013 - Washington Post: "In May 2010, two months after the Affordable Care Act squeaked through Congress, President Obama’s top economic aides were getting worried. Larry Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, and Peter Orzag, head of the Office of Management and Budget, had just received a pointed four-page memo from a trusted outside health adviser. It warned that no one in the administration was “up to the task” of overseeing the construction of an insurance exchange and other intricacies of translating the 2,000-page statute into reality.

Summers, Orzag and their staffs agreed. For weeks that spring, a tug of war played out inside the White House, according to five people familiar with the episode. On one side, members of the economic team and Obama health-care adviser Zeke Emanuel lobbied for the president to appoint an outside health reform “czar” with expertise in business, insurance and technology. On the other, the president’s top health aides — who had shepherded the legislation through its tortuous path on Capitol Hill and knew its every detail — argued that they could handle the job.

In the end, the economic team never had a chance: The president had already made up his mind, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid. Obama wanted his health policy team — led by Nancy-Ann De­Parle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform — to be in charge of the law’s arduous implementation. Since the day the bill became law, the official said, the president believed that “if you were to design a person in the lab to implement health care, it would be Nancy-Ann.”....... HealthCare.gov: How Political Fear Was Pitted Against Technical Needs FR thread.

[eartick]

Discussion with my sister who is way smarter than myself and her conclusion on this healthcare role out.

The Odogdung administration never intends it to work and will never fix it. He seeks failure of 1/3rd of our economy, our health care system. Just another chink in the destruction of America as we know it. Bring down the best country in the world that has the best health care system. Hamstring the “law” with as many pages of BS, rules and regs. Keep tweeking it until NObody has a clue what the law is. Keep dragging it out with failures.

And the other part: The old adage, you control a persons money you control half the man and if you control his health you control the other half of the man.

[WhoisAlanGreenspan?]

Two talking heads I listen to, Bill Bennet and Michael Medved continue to spew that Cruz's strategy was way wrong and out of line. It's interesting to hear how many of their listeners call in to disagree with that GOPe thinking.

"The ObamaCare website fiasco was part of Ted Cruz's strategy all along. In fact, it did not take any kind of genius to know that these embarrassing developments were coming -- only the courage to act on insight."

I'm impressed that the House Republicans followed through with enough courage to at least get the news out there.

As for 2014 I say Throw the Bums Out!

Every single incumbent of every party should be shown the door.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The president had already made up his mind, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid. Obama wanted his health policy team — led by Nancy-Ann De­Parle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform — to be in charge of the law’s arduous implementation. Since the day the bill became law, the official said, the president believed that “if you were to design a person in the lab to implement health care, it would be Nancy-Ann.”.. [excerpt from Washington Post Nov 2,2013 article: "HealthCare.gov: How Political Fear Was Pitted Against Technical Needs"

About Nancy Ann DeParle:

"DeParle was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Rockwood, Tennessee, where she graduated from Rockwood High School. Her mother died of lung cancer when Nancy-Ann was 17

She attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where her major was history and her senior thesis was entitled "Uncle Sam, Hirohito, and Resegregation: The Tule Lake Segregation Center, 1943-1946." She was awarded a B.A. degree with highest honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and selected as a Phi Kappa Phi scholar. She was the first female president of the University of Tennessee student body and was a member of the Gamma Alpha chapter of Delta Gamma. In 1978 Glamour magazine named her one of the year's top ten college women.

After graduating from Tennessee she enrolled in Harvard Law School, but interrupted her studies there when she was awarded a Rhodes scholarship. As a Rhodes scholar, she went to Balliol College of Oxford University, receiving a B.A. from Oxford in 1981. After returning to Harvard, she earned a J.D. degree in 1983.

She is married to Jason DeParle, a reporter for The New York Times.

......DeParle has drawn criticism for her lucrative service on corporate boards after her tenure in the Clinton administration. Msnbc.com reported that she was paid more than $6 million, and served as a director of half a dozen companies that faced federal investigations, whistleblower lawsuits and other regulatory actions. Many of these companies have a stake in the health care reform that she led.

She served as a director of Accredo Health Inc., Boston Scientific, Cerner Corp., DaVita, Guidant, Medco Health Solutions, Speciality Laboratories, and Triad Hospitals. She was a managing director of CCMP Capital....... Source

[Gaffer]

It is impossible for me to believe that the number “six” could: 1) be impossible for the government to tally, 2) impossible to be a ‘rough estimate’, and 3) so vast and complex from so many sources as to be difficult to tabulate.

Maybe they were going about this tabulation thing all wrong. Maybe they should have entered their DoB, SSN, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, insurance policy numbers, Secret Santa accounts, layaway account numbers, and so on, it would have given them the count..

[tanknetter]

No one can tell me that there weren’t GOPE (GOP Elite Snobs) insiders who weren’t well aware that amonst other things that the infamous website wouldn’t be operational at the start up date. But kept it to themselves because they didn’t want the upstart tea partyers to spread the word. That might have killed this thing from the get go.

While the Romney camp didn’t use any researched material in the disasterous 2012 campaign on AHCA that don’t mean they didn’t research what was in there. If they deny researching it then they’re really incompetent.

I've been a bit Machiavellian on this. One of the only good things in the John Roberts SCOTUS opinion was his clear and direct statement that the American voting public gets what it deserves.

I said all along that the full and on-time implementation of ObamaCare worked to Conservative's advantage and should be allowed to proceed on schedule. But not without putting up a really good, but token, fight. Which is exactly as it has played out.

My reason being that had it been delayed there would have been another year to work out the various kinks that were likely to arise in the webpage (being in software dev for over 15 yeas I'm a big proponent of "Gall's Law) and were definitely going to arise with the law itself (the predicable explosion of premiums/deductables, cancellations, etc).

And President Obey-me (I really like that one, btw) would have appeared conciliatory and statesman-like for acceding to the GOP's "unreasonable" demands.

So instead of the public seeing , no, experiencing the massive failure that's occurring the implosion would have occurred on a much longer and drawn-out timeframe that WOULD have pointed the way to single-payer and further expansion of socialist statism.

But what we have now is not only a situation that's going to bring down ObamaCare, it's also going to be THE case study in how ineffective and incompetent big government is when forcibly inserted into major segments of the US economy. For at least the next couple generations.

And it WON'T be just a theoretical exercise. It will be something that truly resonates with the American public because it's a real world example that was actually inflicted on them. Brutally inflicted. Much as memories of the shock of Pearl Harbor have driven US defense and foreign policies for the last 70+ years.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Great post.

[Gaffer]

Years ago, I listened briefly to Bennet. What a load of go-along, get-along Coffee Klatch programming. This man has no business doing a talk show where the audience is predisposed to be conservative. He’s a GOPe elitist from way, way back.

Michael M.....I recently heard his spew on the radio - got really incensed about it. Not a conservative, not anyone whose opinion I value. I am surprised Rush even let him sub for him.

I want a tide of young conservative turks in that House - and in the Senate, too. I want them to have a family - with young children whose lives are ahead of them. Not behind them like all these entrenched GOP elitists who care more about their Senate Country Club or HoR perks.

I want them to still believe in God, and America. I want them to get elected and go up there and legislatively dismantle Obama and his ilk. Burn it to the ground if they have to.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-— Cruz anticipated that the American people would realize eventually: “Holy Cow! Those Republicans were right!” -—

This is the value in fighting a losing battle. You can lose a battle, but win the war.

Alternatively, 35 years of strategic retreat has cost us our country.

[HarleyD]

The Odogdung administration never intends it to work and will never fix it. He seeks failure of 1/3rd of our economy, our health care system.

I think you're giving Obama too much credit. I saw Juan Williams on TV last night and no matter how much the other people were saying that everything the Tea Party members had been saying is coming true, he could not admit it. I've experienced it with my own family. You tell them if you add 11 million to the rolls costs are going to go up and they don't believe it. If you tell them if costs goes up, people will try to lower their costs by finding ways to get out of it like employers decreasing hours or poor people paying the penalty rather than taking out the insurance, they don't believe you. If you tell them this is going to hurt the middle class by canceling their insurance, doctors, etc, they still don't believe it or "it's a transition".

My conclusion-Rational people cannot understand the actions of irrational people.

[LS]

Well, apologies to your sister, but Rush has said this since 2009 and explained exactly how this was designed to lead to single payer.

[EricT.]

Two talking heads I listen to, Bill Bennet and Michael Medved

Quit listening to those idiots.

[Junk Silver]

Another great thing Ted accomplished is that he destroyed what I believe was the main talking point Obama and his minions were going to use to justify Single-Payer when the inevitable crash-and-burn of the Affordable Health-Care Act took place:

“We tried it the Republican’s way, now we have to come up with a real solution!”

I’ve heard a few Democrat talking heads still try to suggest that the ACA was actually a Republican idea, but it’s difficult to make that nonsense stick post-shutdown.

[FrdmLvr]

I’ve heard a few Democrat talking heads still try to suggest that the ACA was actually a Republican idea, but it’s difficult to make that nonsense stick post-shutdown.

It's because the Republicans tried to introduce legislation around 1994 that would relieve businesses from being responsible for their employee's health insurance. But they never suggested socialized medicine. This is when the HSA's came into existence. (health savings accounts). The Democrats are trying to spin the story that the Republicans and the Heritage Foundation pushed for the ACA. They are taking half-truths and spinning complete fiction from it.

[outinyellowdogcountry]

Every day a new “talking point” from the Dems is rolled out. They are glaringly obvious. When I hear a weird new excuse or attempt to change the blame I know they are throwing out a new cover. Cruz got enough attention to inoculate the feeble attempts to blame Republicans. I am so proud of my Texan!

On the other hand, mainstream Republicans have been anemic. The very fact that Romney their chosen candidate makes me wonder if they really oppose the AFA. After all, Romney did the thing as gov. Should have been a major part of campaign but couldn’t attack because Romney would be hypocritical.