No Runny Eggs

I don’t believe I can do a better job than Charles Krauthammer explaining the failure of PlaceboCare. I’ll “borrow” the part where Krauthammer explains why the sum is worse than the parts:

Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed — say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?

Perhaps something like 3-1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry’s feeling about the current Democratic health care bills.

However, I do disagree that the body blow was how to pay for it. The Senate had before it, at a point when they needed absolutely no Republican support and no need for what Michelle Malkin has aptly called “Wreconciliation”, a bill that did everything the Left has ever wanted out of PlaceboCare but one “minor” detail – full federal funding for and a mandate on private insurance to provide abortion-on-demand. In order to get that into PlaceboCare, they sacrificed the official public “option” (with no real change in the cost), shifted a big part of the payment of the costs from “the rich” to businesses deemed to be too generous with their health-care plans, and threw in so much bribery that the House initially blanched at taking it up.

If you hear the word “jihad,” what comes to mind?  Outside of an immediate thought of “Islam,” how about one of this: 

A crusade or struggle characterized by the participants willingness to sacrifice their own lives for the benefit of said crusade or struggle.

It’s now apparent that the Democrat leadership of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry, dancing on another 36,000 job deaths, Reid, have decided to do anything and everything they can to pass Placebocare.  Which version or what is actually contained in Placebocare doesn’t even matter to them anymore.  They will enact any version or combination of the government takeover of health care that they can find enough votes or contrivance of procedures to get it passed. 

The vehicle that is getting the most focus for enacting Placebocare is via reconciliation.  For the life of me I can’t figure out how they use reconciliation as there isn’t a bill that both Houses are working on.  In my mind, the only way to get Placebocare passed, as things stand today, is to convince the House to pass the Senate bill just as it stands.

Whether the Democrats attempt reconciliation, pass the Senate bill or use some other mechanism, the implications on their November prospects are the same; Horrible!  Note the following quotes and polls:

“What the President is really asking House Democrats to do is hold hands, jump off a cliff and hope Harry Reid catches them,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference said.  “And, Harry Reid will have no incentive to catch them because by the time he gets to the reconciliation bill, the President will have already signed the health care bill into law.”

“It was another emphatic denunciation by [Democratic Rep. Stephanie] Herseth Sandlin of the reconciliation process, a controversial technique allowing Democratic leadership in the Senate to bypass an otherwise required 60-vote super majority. And it also was a clear rejection of the Senate version of health-care reform, approved when Democrats still had the 60 votes needed for a super majority.” (Kevin Woster, “Herseth Sandlin says no to Senate health bill, reconciliation,” Rapid City Journal, 03/04/10)

“House Democrats have said they don’t trust the Senate to actto make changes to the Senate bill, which the House would likely have to pass before they’re able to take up a new bill to make changes to that original legislation.” (Michael O’Brien, “Stabenow: House and Dems hammering out final health bill details,” The Hill, 03/04/10)

 “… 48 percent saying lawmakers should work on an entirely new bill and a quarter saying Congress should stop all work on health care reform.” (Paul Steinhauser, “CNN Poll: Health care provisions popular but overall bills unpopular,” CNN, 02/24/10)

Even Howard Dean, no shrinking violet when it comes to larger government and bureaucratic controls, recognizes that budget gimmickry of Placebocare will cause the Democrats pain not only in 2010 but also in the 2012 election:

“The plan, as it comes from the Senate, hangs out every Democrat who’s running for office to dry — including the president, in 2012, because it makes him defend a plan that isn’t in effect essentially yet,” Dean said during an appearance on the liberal Bill Press Radio Show.

With the heated, negative perception of Placebocare, even amongst the Democrats themselves, a reasonable question would be, “Why, if the results are surely political death, would Obama, Pelosi and Reid push for the passage of Placebocare?”  The answer is very straight forward; the Democrat leadership is perfectly willing to commit political suicide for themselves and all those around them, if they are able to move their crusade forward.  Obama, Pelosi and Reid are American jihadists.

If you believe that my use of the term “jihadist” is nothing but hyperbole, you haven’t been paying attention.  Look at the words of Nancy Pelosi.  Numerous publications including the WSJ, have reported Pelosi telling members of her caucus that she is willing to lose seats if they can pass Placebocare.  More to the point, were the Democrats to lose the number of seats that they are now estimated to lose, Pelosi herself would certainly lose the Speaker position.

One of the confounding challenges of combating Islamic jihadists is that they don’t fear their own death.  In fact, Islamic jihadists are told that they will garner a great reward in the afterlife if they sacrifice their physical bodies.  In like manner, the Democrats are willing to sacrifice their political lives to ensure the securing a key victory in their crusade.  President Obama and Nancy Pelosi have been working hard to ensure the House jihadists that they too will receive great rewards should they lose their political life.

In the end, whether Placebocare succeeds or fails in the House will depend on one thing; will the House members choose the life they know or will they choose the rewards promised them in their political afterlife?

(H/T – Michelle Malkin)

Andrew McCarthy unloaded on the Senate “Republicans” who dumped all over Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) for daring to ask that, in a budget of $3,600 billion, that $10 billion in excessive spending (or 0.28%) be found to pay for a month’s extension of unemployment benefits that were already extended from 6 months to 15-17 months depending on the state:

In sum, Bunning’s battle gave Republicans a chance to make points about runaway deficit spending, the fraudulence of PAYGO posturing, the foolish redistribution of wealth to create expensive and unproductive government jobs, unemployment-benefit extensions that Democrats refuse to pay for and that actually increase unemployment, and the monstrous rationing that would be wrought by Obamacare. So, did Republicans rally behind Bunning? Not a chance.

Why? Why abandon this fight when the GOP has the facts on its side? Why no enthusiasm when a year of Obama’s forced march to crony socialism has the public more receptive than ever to the case for slashing government? Simple: Republicans are afraid of being demagogued — as Democrats and the media demagogued Bunning — as wanting to cut off funding (i.e., money we don’t have) for unemployment insurance and the usual laundry list of other Big Government baubles like COBRA coverage, satellite TV dishes, the “highway trust fund,” etc. Republicans also did not want their own sorry PAYGO history rehashed.

Here’s the sad truth: For all the shining they did at last week’s White House “summit” on health care, when it gets down to actually putting the brakes on the Big Gummint Express, most of today’s Republicans are AWOL. They’re great at the debate society. But making the fight on something concrete, really saying no when it means grinding redistribution to a halt, means taking the slings and arrows. No thanks, they say, let’s just make the whole thing go away on a voice vote, the sooner the better. Indeed, while Senator Bunning should be lauded for engaging this fight, it is telling that he took it on only after deciding not to seek reelection.

In a Corner post this past weekend called “Transformation,” I dissented from the heady palaver on the Right about how Democrats are headed for a November Waterloo. I think the Left has already factored in the inevitability of setbacks — perhaps heavy setbacks — in the next few election cycles. While our side swoons over the prospect, the statists coldly calculate that these losses are a price well worth paying in order to impose a transformative takeover of the economy.

It is a perfectly rational calculation for two reasons.

First, with a significantly bigger and more powerful government bureaucracy, there will be many avenues for leadership to reward Democrats who lose their seats after casting the unpopular votes necessary to enact the Left’s program. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who spent his post-Clinton wilderness months in a lucrative sinecure at Freddie Mac, knows well how this game works — and, under Obama’s command, the economy is becoming one big Freddie.

Second, and more important, Democrats know the electoral setbacks will only be temporary. They are banking on the assurance that Republicans merely want to win elections and have no intention of rolling back Obamacare, much less of dismantling Leviathan.

For my money (while I still have some), that’s an eminently sound bet. The Bunning battle, in which the GOP was nowhere to be found, is the proof. Bunning just wanted Congress to live within its gargantuan means. Yet, the Washington Post ridiculed him: “angry and alone, a one-man blockade against unemployment benefits, Medicare payments to doctors, satellite TV to rural Americans and paychecks to highway workers.” That’s outrageously unfair, but it is a day at the beach compared to the Armageddon that would be unleashed upon any attempt to undo Obama’s welfare state on steroids.

As it turns out, Republicans didn’t have the stomach for a fight over wealth transfers that plainly exacerbate the problem of unemployment. Why would anyone think they’d take on a far more demanding war, in which Democrats and the legacy media would relentlessly indict them for “denying health insurance to millions of Americans”?

Even if the GOP gets a majority for a couple of cycles, even if President Obama is defeated in his 2012 reelection bid, Obamacare will be forever. And once the public sees that the GOP won’t try to dismantle Obamacare, it will lose any enthusiasm for Republicans. Democrats will eventually return to power, and it will be power over a much bigger, much more intrusive government.

The historical strategy of the Left has been to create a new Leviathan growth of Socialist government every 30 years, stave off defeat of said Leviathan until it becomes so ingrained into the culture that even those that would have worked to kill it both before it its creation and during its infancy accept its place in the culture (which usually takes 15-20 years), then repeat the cycle.

(H/T – Kevin Fischer)

I’m actually surprised that CNN ran with this short montage of Teh Won’s facial expressions while Republicans were making their points at the PlaceboCare “summit” last week….

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si1Xec3elDU[/youtube]

As Kevin said, “Sure Obama wanted to listen to Republicans….really he did!” And we have a “slightly-used” bridge to sell you.