Rick Scott deserves a lot of credit for being one of the first to raise money and fight against Obamacare. Glad to have him back for his perspective on MA. — Erick

Two different post-mortems from last night’s epic election are in, here and here, and the picture is crystal-clear: stopping government-run health care was by far the number one factor in Scott Brown’s history-making run for the Senate. By large margins, voters said their number one issue was stopping Congress from passing Obamacare. Via Politico:

Fifty-two percent of Bay State voters who were surveyed as the polls closed said they opposed the federal health care reform measure and 42 percent said they cast their ballot to help stop President Obama from passing his chief domestic initiative.

But what’s even more instructive is where the message came from: Massachusetts, a state that is already suffering from the shortcomings of a government-run health care system. Bay Staters are currently experiencing the prolonged waits common in Canada and they’ve seen their premiums rise to the highest in the country. Had this election happened in any other state, even a liberal state, without a government-run health system, the message would be, “We don’t want the reforms that Congress is pushing.” But coming from Massachusetts, a liberal state used as a model for the current health care legislation, the message has so much more…gravitas.

Bay Staters said it loud and clear last night: “We know all about government-run health care, and we’ve had enough.”

Aside from a handful of mentions, not much has been made thus far of Republican Senator Jim DeMint’s courageous objection to the appointment of conferees on the health care bill.

Most people know that the House passed one version of a health care bill at 11 pm on a Saturday, while the Senate passed a very different version at 7am on Christmas Eve. Before any bill can go to the President for signature, those differences are normally resolved in what is known as a conference report, negotiated by representatives, called “conferees,” appointed by the House and the Senate.

But Senator DeMint led a behind-the-scenes effort by Senate Republicans to object to the appointment of conferees. The objection means the House will take up the Senate bill, and if any changes are made, the bill has to work its way back through the entire legislative process in the Senate again. And changing the bill means another tough vote for nervous House Democrats, and even more disconcerting for Senator Reid, the bill will have to go through the whole Senate procedure again, working to collect another 60 votes. Further, the process will potentially expose the bill to new amendments from those in Congress who saw the deal Senator Nelson negotiated in exchange for his support.

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From the diaries, by Erick. Rick Scott is the head of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights and knows what he’s talking about.

What are we up to now, six different names for the public option? Let us count the ways desperate Democrats have tried to re-brand, re-tool, re-name or re-invent what is, by all accounts, a plot that will ultimately force millions of Americans into the waiting arms of government health care bureaucrats.

During the 2008 campaign, the public option was described as “government-run plan similar to Medicare.” Whoa…really? The same Medicare plan that cannot now meet its own financial obligations and is projected to be come up short by $38 trillion by the time the youngest Americans will need it? No wonder we haven’t heard that description much lately.

After the presidential inauguration, talk of the public option steadily picked up steam, reaching a fever pitch in August when senior citizens were shouting down their elected officials and canceling their AARP memberships in droves, and while Tea Party activists were getting their fingers bitten off at town hall meetings – all due to strong opposition against any form of government-run health care.

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