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Is Passing Health Care Forgivable?

The vast majority of likely voters strongly oppose ObamaCare — and the best word to sum up the emotions and frustrations of those voters who have had to endure the insanity of the health care jihadists is that they hate ObamaCare.

And the two largest subsets of those strongly opposed are independents and senior citizens. Just ask Scott Brown’s campaign staff. He figured out real early that he could just walk into a nursing home and tell the seniors ObamaCare would cut half a trillion from Medicare.

Done. Next nursing home please.

And then, this fall in the mid-term elections, add ridicule to Medicare cuts: Washington thinks you can lower the deficit by spending $2.5 trillion on ObamaCare. Really. Congress says so.

Oh, lets also not forget the Senate. Their corruption of rules and fairness: the Christmas Eve vote, the buying and selling of an abortion vote and the Louisiana Purchase. (Senator Nelson and Senator Landrieu have already made one 60 second ad on, strangely, banking reform.)

When the Bluest of Blue states sends to Washington a Senator who campaigned on shooting ObamaCare in the head, the irrational response from the Dems is that they redouble their efforts to pass ObamaCare anyway.

The Dems message is one the likely voter is already familiar with when it comes to the Democrats and ObamaCare: we are not listening; we refuse to listen.

By the way, humans generally get really angry when they keep trying to speak up and be heard, but instead are ignored, dismissed and disrespected. They feel humiliated. They get angry. Humiliating and angering voters with the Dem’s open-wide-we-are-going-to-cram-this-down-your-throat will not be forgotten. Or forgiven.

And the stench of corruption continues: we are going to have a vote that passes the bill in the House without voting on it. Ignoring the Constitution and making up your own rules to force something on the country the public hates will result in a reaction that is not pleasant.

But the Dems think they are on a mission from God.

All in a year where Dems are down in the polls, Congress has never been more disliked by the average citizen and the Speaker’s approval rating is near pond-scum. ObamaCare even shaved a third of the Trillion Dollar President’s approval rating off his Oneness.

And ironically, Dems are being told that voting for ObamaCare is the morally right thing to do.

Is the right thing to politically destroy yourself, your friends and your colleagues?

Will the public forgive attempting to pass something they hate? Yes.

Will the public forgive passing something they hate? No.

Acting in your own political interest always trumps political suicide. Living to fight another day is not only moral, it is a smarter.

Unless, of course, you are irrational and delusional and committed to political suicide. Then, you are very dangerous and very scary. And Americans reactions to people and things that are very dangerous and very scary vary widely.

There are 34 No votes now, according to The Hill’s whip count. Just three more No votes means the bill dies. And there are dozens of Dems who are undecided.

While the White House and the Speaker may be hell bent on destroying themselves, their party and their colleagues politically, there are at least three more Dems who are not.

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COMMENTS

  • swami7774

    …your feeling that the bill won’t pass?

    • Dan Perrin

      I am not.

      It will fail.

      I just saw this article, in the NYT and it made me angry:

      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/weekinreview/14baker.html?ref=weekinreview

      so I thought I’d write what I did above.

      • earlgrey

        Were going to vot no they would have said so by now. Why put yourself and the staff through the lobbying and angry public.

        I promised myself I would stay off the computer today. This is not good for me.

        May try to find a way to DC though.

  • http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

    Which of the following is being proposed by the Slaughter Rule:

    1) An affirmative vote by the House to pass the reconciliation bill constitutes approval of the Senate healthcare bill at that time – that is, the Senate bill will then be sent to the President for signature regardless of what happens to the reconciliation bill in the Senate – which in turn means (assuming the President as expected signs the bill immediately) that the Senate bill will be signed before the Senate takes up the House bill.

    OR

    2) Upon approval of a final reconciliation bill by both Houses, at that point the Senate healthcare bill automatically is to be sent to the President for signature but not before.

    In other words, is passage of the Senate healthcare bill by the House conditional upon both House and Senate both agreeing upon and passing a reconciliation bill or only conditional upon the House passing their version of the reconciliation bill regardless of what the Senate does thereafter?.

    • http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

      …I’ve read so many commentaries about the Slaughter Rule at RedState and elsewhere that the substance has gotten confused in the multitude of versions.

      • Dan Perrin

        it will continue to be unclear.

        This is a case of defining what they said they would do, which is have a vote not on a bill that passes it.

        Confusing? Yes.

        Constitutional? No.

        • redneck_hippie

          who pooh pooh the idea that the Dem leadership is a politburo.

    • teresakoch

      I’m not sure what they think they’re going to be voting on – rainbows and Unicorn promises, maybe…..

      • Dan Perrin

        Voting on a rule about a bill that does not exist.

        Classic Dem cram-down strategy.

  • reddog53

    by sewing the Student Loan takeover onto the monstrosity….it’s like they are bound and determined to alienate everyone for the longest possible time.

    • Dan Perrin

      too?

      Over-reach defined.

  • tngal

    This “reform” in its present state will do more harm than good for the country now and in the future.

    All sides agree the current path will bankrupt the nation, but a complete remolding of what constitutes healthcare is unnecessary. Incremental modifications are best, giving time for everyone to see what works and what doesn’t.

    Its completely unforgivable that the stewards of our tax dollars are going against the will of over half the country.

  • NeoKong

    They don’t care Dan. They just don’t care. The leadership has already decided that losing their majority is an acceptable loss. If the town hall meetings of the August recess demonstrated anything is that those U.S. Reps (D) don’t give a damn what the voters want.

    On Sept. 12th a million people marched right by Nancy Pelosi’s office window and all she did was sneer at them. She called them astroturfing nazis. She compared them to the people who killed the gay city supervisor in San Francisco thirty years ago.
    The Democratic Congress has the same mindset as do the people at the Daily Kos and MSNBC.
    What they have in common is that they all despise Tea Partiers and anything conservative.
    Not only do they want to pass that monstrous bill ,they would particularly enjoy it more by shoving it down our throats.
    Understand….?
    They’re crazed.

    They WANT to shove it down our throats or more specifically up somewhere else on our bodies. These people absolutely despise the voters who disagree with them and they know that once this gets passed then it will take moving heaven and earth to repeal it.
    Their attitude on having it repealed is “Pfftt…go ahead and try it pal”
    It will be like trying to repeal Prohibition.
    What we have here Dan is a group of politicians who are not afraid of losing their jobs and that makes them unreachable.

    Do you remember when Obama seized the auto companies…?
    Do you remember what he did to the secured investors ?
    He took all their money and gave it to the UAW.
    He screwed them with extreme prejudice.
    Now we have two auto companies that are basically Government Service Entities and that’s how he wants it. They will never be able to pay back those loans and no one will ask. The unions run those companies now. Not the investors.
    Redistribution baby.
    It’s what’s for dinner.

  • Dan Perrin

    There will be blood?

    • David123
      • NeoKong

      • Swamp_Yankee

        in real life.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    If the Dems had let it die after Scott Brown’s election, that had a chance to be forgiven. Not now.

    Obviously our kind of people hate their guts, but I don’t think I am projecting my thoughts onto the “great unwashed”. The adoring press has made the Democrat suicide charge the front page news every day, and it’s well up into March.

    And this obvious shuck-and-jive thing to get it past the will of the people, even if it fails, will not be forgiven. In at least 200 competitive congressional districts, that will be every Republican candidate’s favorite thing to run ads on.

    • cari

      this attempt will NOT be forgotten or forgiven.

      For awhile, while you could disagree, you still had to admire the Dems unwavering decades-long commitment to universal healthcare. But bribing, lying and now trying to cheat by ignoring the Constitution has moved well beyond anything that is remotely admirable. It’s repulsive.

      I think Dan is right. The public at large sees the Dems as downright dangerous.

      Like the Ramirez cartoon yesterday of Dems depicted as a suicide bomber- passing Obamacare will destroy themselves. But what was missing in the cartoon is all the rest of us it will destroy too.

  • techsan

    well…they are in a manner…but it’s a mission from “a” god…not “the” God.

    Fully Socialized Health Care is a sacrament. Without it, it’s hard to hold fellowship in the Statist Church of Gaia and Man. It’s a hole in their liturgy that needs to be plugged.

  • Ahab

    This is much worse than “won’t be forgiven,” this is dangerous in the extreme. Implementing the “Slaughter” rule change to get ObummerCare passed will cross a line the Dems must be insane to even contemplate. Americans are infuriated at this. Don’t they understand what they’re doing, this Congress? Don’t they understand we’ve had enough?

    I commented on this move by the Dems on a blog stating, “Should this rule change be accepted, employed, and the ObummerCare Bill presented to the president for signature, then the equivalent of Martial Law will have been implemented within America. There is no bill, the House has NOT voted on anything, certainly not the healthcare bill passed by the Senate, as required by the Constitution before presentment to the president. To present the Senate healthcare bill to the president without first having had bicameralism plus presentment of a legislative bill constitutes the acceptance of a dictatorship, a complete paving over of the Constitution of the United States, and a TYRANNY of the worst order.” I said further, “doing this could start a civil war.”

    Responses to my Their responses were overwhelming, not COULD start a civil war, but WOULD start a civil war. Americans aren’t just wagging their finger at the Congress, they’re enraged.

    I ask you, Congress, are you blind, and deaf? Do you know what you are doing to our country? Don’t you understand the danger to America that you are placing before us?

  • miconservative

    the idea of forcing this legislation through that is unwanted by the American people is unbelievable. the idea of forcing it through without a vote directly on the bill is unforgivable. i am not certain it is unconstitutional, that part of Article 1, Section 7 seems to be talking about veto override votes to me, but i am not a constitutional scholar.

    Either way the dems are digging their own grave and digging very deep. i am guessing if this thing passes we will be looking at 50 to 70 seats. no kidding. Their will be total outrage and uprising.

  • lurker9876

    If Pelosi decides to use the Slaughter solution. which is provably and demonstrably unconstitutional, who can take this up as a lawsuit before SCOTU?

  • Section9

    That’s where this is headed. The Regime is too bullheaded and too sure of D.C. Republican ineptitude to think that we will resist. However, resistance will begin in the States and will spread.

    Like wildfire, and it will cause a Constitutional crisis. The reduction of our Credit Rating to AA from AAA will be the Bell That Tolls for Obama and his Alinskyite Wreckers.

    You can’t fool the Bond Market All the Time.

  • http://whereswalden.com/ Jeff Walden

    So is Pelosi the Penguin, or is it Obama? :-D

  • Repair_Man_Jack

    All I can say to anyone who votes for it is that when their souls suffer eternal immolation in Hell, they can Damn well roast a wienie over the flames.
    This bill is the crack-cocaine of the welfare state and the endgame of the subinfuedation of America. It must be destroyed. It’s ardent champions must be expunged from the empowered elite of our nation. Aside from all of that, Obamacare supports are swell people, just like the rest of us.

  • LibertarianHawk

    It seems obvious that Obamacare is seen as a foundational step in the eyes of most Democrats. It’s a starting point — and nobody really needs to ask the question of what the presumed ending point is.

    Obama himself tipped his hand when he said that it may take 10 or 15 years to dispense with the employer-provided model of healthcare financing.

    So why did Obama seem to capitulate on the public option so easily?

    Well, because it ought to be pretty easy to implement at a future date when people realize that costs for private-sector health insurance continue to rise in the wake of Obamacare.

    The best way to make “Option B” more palatable is to make “Option A” less so.

    I think this will prove to be a miscalculation on the Democrats’ part. With this bill, which will have attracted zero Republican support, they are taking ownership of the American healthcare system and all of its warts….

    …even those which they could plausibly argue had nothing to do with their legislation.

    They’re thinking (actually, I’d say they’re positively certain) that this legislation will result in even more of the one thing that frustrates people about our healthcare system: its cost.

    And they’re betting that the increased frustration will further sour people on the very concept of a private-sector healthcare paradigm and help clear more of the path that leads to single-payer.

    It’s a plausible gambit. But I’m not sure they’ve fully considered the political risks.

    With this bill, whether they like it or not, the Democrats will effectively be assuming ownership of the American healthcare system.

    If people do like the results, they will be rewarded for it…without having to share any of the spoils with Republicans.

    If people do not like the results, I think the effectiveness of continuing to blame greedy insurers and providers — and offering more Democratic legislation as the antidote — will be significantly diminished.

    • penguin2

      taking ownership of the American people. They will own us “cradle-to-grave.” The complete Nanny state, just look at England.

      • LibertarianHawk

        Like I said, there’s almost no question that the endgame that Democrats have in mind on healthcare is single-payer. It long has been.

        The prism through which they view any and every specific debate regarding healthcare is “Does this further the cause of single-payer healthcare…or does it hinder it?”

        If they answer affirmatively, they’ll support it. If they answer negatively, they’ll oppose it.

        This bill, though, is not itself the realization of that goal. However, they see it as a huge step in that direction.

        The question is why they see it that way. And the only plausible answer I can conceive is that it promises to further hobble that which remains of the private-sector healthcare industry….which will have the effect of making their prescription seem more palatable to the voting public than it currently is.

        What I’m saying is that this gambit may backfire on them and have the opposite effect.

        • avgjo

          There is a cynicism on our side (perhaps well founded), that the average person wants government to solve their problems for them.

          The reason there is so much anxiety in the country is people are mad that the government is trying to do so much to ‘solve’ their problems,

          Whatever happens, we should be focused on 10 and 12, getting a 60+ majority and the presidency.

          Then we’ll wreak havoc.

          • LibertarianHawk

            I just think they’re bumping up against the end of that political gravy train.

            Leftist social engineers have spent at least 45 years enacting policy that has (either as the intended primary effect or a useful side effect) made private-sector healthcare increasingly untenable….all in such a way as to be able to blame those in the industry for the ill effects.

            And it’s paid a lot of political dividends in that time.

            So why do I think we might finally be seeing the end of that cycle of fantasy?

            Well, have you taken a look at the polling data on Obamacare? Compare it to public opinion on Medicare and Medicaid or any other significant expansion of government’s beneficence.

            People don’t want this. And I have a feeling they’ll feel vindicated for not having wanted it, once it takes hold and the results start pouring in.

          • avgjo

            They say its all about timing.

            The iron is hot.

            We must strike.

            Focus on 10 and 12. 60+ majorities in Senate and presidency.

            Keep their feet to the fire in the meantime and afterward.

            We’ll win.

    • Achance

      to step in and take over and it won’t take long. The mandated coverages, especially pre-existing condition coverage and immediate availability of coverage, will cause the price of insurance to skyrocket. In today’s economy, people can’t make themselves worth more, at least not readily or quickly, to keep up with the increasing costs. So, the government that broke it will be asked to fix it and the Democrats will get credit for giving relief to the middle class.

      • Repair_Man_Jack

        If someone sleeping in the cutter of Cahenga Blvd asks for a handout, I can get that and understand why he’s begging. When someone pulling down 6-figures pulls that act, I question their manhood.

        I don’t joke there. They might as well have it cut off and tossed to a street dog. What have we become as a nation, when our reasonably successful people walk around with the begging bowl?

      • avgjo

        Like they’re asking them to fix it now? The game is up.

        People know who broke the system and how.

        They won’t be so susceptible next time.

        And even if they are, the Republicans need to offer the solution. And give it to them. Ram it down the Dems’ throats.

        We need to give them the 60 vote majority, starting in 10 and culminating in 12. And the presidency. With Obama, pelosi and Reid, the wind is at our back.

        Let’s get to work.

        • Achance

          immediately and people won’t have a way to handle those costs quickly or easily in this ecoomy. They’ll be dropping HI where they can and screaming for relief. Now, maybe the Republcans can sell them on their version of relief and blame the Democrats for making the mess, but remember 52% have already proven they’ll believe anything.

          • avgjo

            They still have a good portion of that; the libs are hopeless.

            The independents were burned, and they know it. They won’t fall for the same gag twice.

            The tea party won’t let people forget. Hell, the tea party IS the people.

            Mark Steyn, the most dour pessimistic guy on our side even said in Dec that
            America is the only country in the Western world where the people were clamoring for LESS government involvement in their life.

            Don’t forget, Obama ran (deceitfully) as a centrist, making himself out to be a small government, low taxes kinda guy. THAT’S what people voted for, at least the independents.

          • Achance

            is just avoiding the word ignorant. Or as some pol once said, “the only thing you find in the middle of the road is a yellow line and dead skunks.”

            There was plenty of information out there about what Comrade Obama really was; just read the book that Ayers wrote for him, look at his background. If somebody was too dumb to see him for what he is, that person should be stripped of their right to vote.

            In any event, it is going to take a lot to get the people who voted for him to admit they were had and reject the cool black dude.

      • LibertarianHawk

        And you and they may well prove right. After all, IMO, the soaring costs of healthcare we have now are largely attributable to government expansions of yore.

        And people have a remarkable capacity to blissfully assume the role of would-be placekicker Charlie Brown as often as the Lucy Van Pelts in DC ask us to.

        But, for one thing, past reforms were largely bipartisan efforts. And, for another, they weren’t so loudly sold on the promise of addressing the one thing that animates people on the issue: cost.

        And I think the Democrats could find their generations-old advantage on healthcare policy gone for good if the result of this is what most people expect it to be.