Vice President Joe Biden was in upstate New York today stumping for Bill Owens in the heated NY-23 Congressional special election. You know, the one that doesn’t matter and has no national portent whatsoever, except if Owens wins, of course. In any event, Biden had a few words to say about Scozzafava’s departure and the GOP:

We aren’t asking you to switch your party. We are just saying join us in teaching a lesson to those absolutists who say no dissent is permitted within your own party … This is a different ideology. This is different than anything I’ve known in my 45 years of being familiar with this district. You know, they may not have any room for moderate views in the Republican Party upstate anymore, but let me assure you, we have room, we have room.

What’s ironic about Biden’s statement about “absolutists” is that it ignores his own party’s attempts at minimizing the effects of Blue Dogs and moderates on a variety of issues including health care reform. Concerns about the public option and potential costs are to be swept aside and steamrolled under the weight of an ideologically driven liberal agenda, moderate Dems be damned if need be (Pelosi has said as much in saying she’s willing to lose Blue Dog districts as long as her agenda gets through). Indeed, Mr. Biden, your own voters didn’t seem to have room for Joe Lieberman, who was primaried by the liberal faithful and still found victory as an independent. The threat of primary races still hangs over many moderate Democrats who don’t toe the liberal line well enough, and indeed, hangs over Arlen Specter, who the Democrats initially championed as a great moderate before working to ensure he will receive a challenge from a more liberal Democrat next year.

And let’s get a few things straight. Scozzafava got a lot of monetary support from the national party, and she was only forced out when her poll numbers dropped so low that it was obvious the voters of NY-23 didn’t see her as a viable option in the race. And about Scozzafava’s “moderate” status -  it isn’t as though she’s a mostly solid Republican that had some pro-choice leanings. Her record is solidly liberal, with an award from Planned Parenthood for her abortion stance, her support of gay marriage, her support for card check, her support for the economic stimulus plan, her ties to unions, and her ties to ACORN and the Working Families Party. Those who have worn the “moderate” moniker like Tom Ridge, Rudy Giuliani, or John McCain are easily to the right of Scozzafava, so let’s be honest about what she is: a liberal, not a moderate.

That’s fine for her to hold those views, but it doesn’t take an “absolutist” to have issues with a Scozzafava candidacy. Disagreement on one or two or several issues is perfectly fine and quite healthy within a political party, as long as there are fundamental areas of agreement. But with a constellation of policy stands that are hard to accept, it becomes less of an ideological purity test and more of a practical argument along the lines of, “What will really be the difference in Congress if this liberal Republican candidate wins over the liberal Democrat?”

It’s a point I was trying to make yesterday, and a point I’ve been trying to make over the last year throughout the rhetorical fluctuations about Colin Powell and Arlen Specter. No one is trying to force moderates out of the party (or they shouldn’t be anyway), but at some point a fundamental question must be asked: what does it mean to be a Republican? If it means nothing besides being a “not-Democrat”, then the entire reason for the party’s existence is obliterated. This is why the GOP, if it is to have any success, must not simply hope for Democratic failure, but must create and articulate a series of core principles and positive plans for action if it is to have any chance at regaining the national electorate.

Democrats and liberals are hoping to forestall that examination by playing up the tension between factions of the Republican party, suggesting that the GOP is becoming too “extreme” or “too right-wing,” or that litmus tests of ideological purity are being administered and destroying the GOP’s inclusiveness. The truth is that the tension is originating not from factions within the party, but between a party leadership that is focused solely on statistical pandering for mathematically based victory and a Republican and conservative base that is yearning for its representatives to stand for something more than “not-Democrat.”

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

The small town of Kinston, NC, population 23,000, voted to do away with partisan elections, meaning party affiliation would be meaningless in local contests. To comply with the Voting Rights Act, they first had to get the approval of the Justice Department, which in an opinion devoid of logic denied the request saying equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the explicit presence of a Democratic Party affiliation. I could not make this up if I tried (via the Washington Times):

Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party. The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their “candidates of choice” - identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.

The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.

The punchline is that Kinston is a one-party Democratic town anyway, one that overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama.

How much more demeaning and partisan could the Department of Justice become? In essence, they are saying that southern Democratic voters are so racist that only their blind partisanship will overwhelm their hatred to cause them to pull the lever for black candidates. Even more egregious is the notion that only Democratic candidates can ever be a candidate of choice for the black community, an opinion that seeks to paint an entire racial community into a corner that’s advantageous to one political party.

The opinion was handed down by the same Justice official, Loretta King, who dismissed the Black Panther case of voter intimidation in Philadelphia. Evidently Ms. King has more of a problem with the lack of a “D” by a candidate’s name than club-wielding thugs outside a polling station. My favorite criticism has to be from Abigail Thernstrom, member of the US Commission on Civil Rights, who had this to say:

“The Voting Rights Act is not supposed to be compensating for failure of voters to show up on Election Day,” she said. “The Voting Rights Act doesn’t guarantee an opportunity to elect a ‘candidate of choice.’ … My ‘candidate of choice’ loses all the time in an election.”

Sorry, but that’s just funny.

We should always be on the lookout for discrimination in voting laws and practices and ensure that all American citizens of all races have an opportunity to fairly cast a vote. This Justice decision, however, has nothing to do with protecting rights and everything to do with a purely partisan interest in protecting the ability of the Democratic Party to keep certain demographics within its sway - overriding the wishes of a small town to do away with party affiliation in the process.

It’s a remarkably partisan and racially polarizing decision from Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, and it’s a disappointing step backward in moving toward a color-blind and letter-blind society where people are judged not by the color of their skin or the letter by their names, but by the content of their characters.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World

The Nobel Peace Prize was already flirting with irrelevance after recent selections like Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, and Jimmy Carter, but after the award was today announced as going to President Barack Obama, in office for only nine months and for only 12 days when the nomination period expired, the award can officially be said to mean pretty much nothing these days. It’s a shame since so many in the past have legitimately deserved recognition for their efforts - Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela and our own Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Can anyone legitimately argue that Obama has accomplished anything of major substance period, let alone anything that puts him in the league of the likes of those people?

The Nobel Committee said Obama was given the award based on his “changing the international climate” and “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Basically, Obama promised a bunch of stuff and we like him, so here ya go! Obama himself said he didn’t think the award reflected his own accomplishments and to his credit said he didn’t think he deserved to be mentioned with other past transformational winners. The most generous of observers are claiming the award is based on the hope and promise of an Obama administration, but that returns to the question, “Has any of that happened yet?”

It’s interesting to see Democratic pushback on skepticism over the merits of an Obama Nobel Peace Prize. The DNC accused Republicans of “throwing their lot in with the Taliban” after RNC Chairman Michael Steele made light of the Obama win. Sen. Barbara Boxer continued the meme by repeating the Taliban smear on MSNBC. The Taliban did indeed say that Obama didn’t deserve the award, so grade school logic apparently allows you to equate laughing at the merits of the Nobel Peace Prize with being murdering misogynistic terrorist-loving thugs.

The only problem is who else is “throwing their lot in with the Taliban”:

• Lech Walesa, whose response was “So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far.”
• The UK Times Online
• Mainstream news outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post, who have acted as stunned and skeptical as anyone else
• Matt Lauer: “There are no major foreign policy achievements to date … In some ways he wins this for not being George W. Bush.”
• Mark Halperin, who recently gave Obama an A- on the job he’s had so far and compared his win today to Marisa Tomei’s Oscar
• CBS News

So I’m not really concerned with all the grumbling of critics being “un-American” or “unpatriotic,” particularly by folks who spent the last 8 years grousing about such terms. It seems those offended by Bush’s “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” attitude are quick to use it themselves to demonize opinions they don’t care for. The fact is that the kindest thing you can say about the win is that it’s far too premature. You don’t give awards based on expectations, you give them on results.

All of this debate focuses attention on the reality of Obama’s accomplishments, attention that the White House surely does not want. He had little when he was elected President and he has little nine months into his Presidency. To those who believe he deserves this based on some vague notion of transformational hope sweeping the globe due solely to Obama’s good intentions, smooth speeches and his general existence, I seriously question their grip on reality. I’m not mad about the prize, just confused and amused as Obama is rewarded yet again for style over substance.

I have to say I’m amused at the justifications and rationalizations being employed to explain why Obama deserved this award more than anyone else in the world, explanations that strain the limits of credibility and logic. But here’s the reason the award bothers me and why critics are speaking out about it: Obama and his supporters can and will use the Nobel Peace Prize win as a political cudgel to silence critics and throw prestige toward whatever cause the administration desires. That such a politically powerful award (for those that will now recognize it anyway) was given for so little accomplishment in the real world shows how far the Nobel Peace Prize has fallen and underscores a continuing theme of Barack Obama’s political career: reward for rhetoric and style … and little else.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

Pick your preferred source on this one, whether it’s the AP or the Times of London. The Obama administration appears to be headed down a course that would see the focus of military operations in Afghanistan shift away from fighting the Taliban toward simply hunting al-Qaeda. During the shift the administration is apparently willing to accept the Taliban have “some role” in Afghanistan’s government, and perhaps even cede territory to them on the ground.

This is the so-called counterterrorism option, and while the administration says it won’t let the Taliban retake power, if you give them an inch, they will undoubtedly be emboldened to seize a mile. The aim is to use Predator drone attacks and special forces in going after al-Qaeda targets, a thought process that leaves out the fact that you don’t just push a button one thousand miles away and kill yourself some terrorists - you need intel on the ground in order to make such attacks surgical and effective.

You don’t have to take my word for it, though - just take a look at what CBS’ Afghanistan correspondent Lara Logan has to say about it. Having spent a great deal of time in-country, she calls such a move “disastrous” and “catastrophic” in that it leaves the troops we have there currently undermanned and vulnerable to a surge in military momentum that favors the Taliban. Hell, even Code Pink are rethinking their support for Afghanistan demilitarization.

The move to redefine the Taliban as some kind of accidental enemy of the United States is designed to provide rhetorical cover to avoid sending more troops, acting more aggressively or generally working to provide a winnable strategy in the region. By saying the Taliban isn’t really our enemy (even after they’ve harbored terrorists and killed our soldiers) the administration can simply declare victory and get back to enacting its sweeping domestic agenda.

What a shift from last year when candidate Obama was pledging to refocus and redouble our efforts in Afghanistan (including increasing troop levels) and even knocking then Pakistani Pres. Musharraf for making peace deals with the Taliban. Now we’re poised to do the same thing ourselves in the name of political expediency and saving face. The move is also designed to provide the appearance of “doing something” to remove the distraction of Afghanistan from the President’s true focus - that of his domestic agenda. Indeed, the whole of Obama’s foreign policy so far seems to be a mere holding pattern at best and outright scaling back at worst.

It appears that Obama is now prepared to ignore the urgent advice of General McChrystal, a man he himself installed as Afghanistan commander ostensibly because Obama trusted his judgment and his expertise. I know soldiers who have served past and present in Afghanistan and no decision to send more troops in should be taken lightly. But with troop morale low, soldiers on the ground recognize they need some help. Instead of that assistance, we’ll simply be shifting our priorities instead.

I want all of our brave soldiers to come home safely and honorably, and I want Afghanistan to be a stable country free of the specter of al-Qaeda and terrorism. I don’t know how reclassifying the Taliban squares with those goals, but I can’t imagine how it would be helpful. Ceding ground to the Taliban may prove to be a viable political option, but it looks to me to be the forerunner of disaster in Afghanistan.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

Controversy has been swirling the last few days over the Associated Press’ decision to publish a photo depicting Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard mortally wounded in combat. The picture shows the massive leg injuries of Lance Cpl. Bernard, sustained during an ambush grenade attack, to which Bernard later succumbed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had asked the AP to forgo publishing the picture, and expressed his disappointment in its release. The AP defended its actions, with senior managing editor John Daniszewski commenting, “We thought that the image told a story of sacrifice; it told a story of bravery. We felt that the picture told a story that people needed to see and be aware of.”

The case recalls the uproar of a few years ago when the AP published photos of the flag-draped coffins of fallen soldiers. I don’t think a direct comparison can be made - in the previous case, the images were nothing so disturbing as boxes draped with Old Glory, and I think the AP was well within the bounds of decency to publish those. In this instance, we’re talking about an image of a soldier who has just had his legs practically blown off. The subject matter of the two kinds of photos are completely different.

I can understand a greater societal need to keep war from being overly sanitized and turned into a video game. And I can sympathize with a desire to associate an image with the sometimes faceless soldiers serving, fighting, and dying in America in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are two problems, though: I don’t think for a second the AP had these intentions at heart, and the publication goes against the expressed strong wishes of the family of Lance Cpl. Bernard.

It’s my opinion that the AP didn’t use the image for any purpose beyond voyeurism and sensationalism. The photo itself is a little blurry, and I find suspicious the claim that this particular photo was so newsworthy it demanded release. I don’t believe the AP finds the controversy all that distracting, as it’s given them an opportunity to pat themselves on the back for their journalistic integrity.

It’s got nothing to do with politics or an agenda, and everything to do with the simple catchphrase in the news business: “If it bleeds, it leads.” I could care less if Sec. Gates was ignored. What does matter to me is that the parents of the dead Marine told the AP twice they didn’t want the photo of their mortally wounded son run in newspapers and websites across the world. Indeed, Daniszewski admitted the AP didn’t seek permission for the photo’s release.

Forget the politics of left and right. This is a failure of fundamental human decency. There are numerous other images of the harsh realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which by no means should be forgotten or whitewashed. But this particular photo wasn’t so newsworthy that it deserved publication over the objections of a fallen soldier’s family.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

After a brutal August recess, there’s more bad news for Congress today from the Pew Research Center, who finds Congress’ favorability rating at 37%, which is the worst it’s had in 24 years. In addition, Democrats are clinging to a 1% margin of people who would vote for them over a Republican in generic balloting, compared to a 12-point advantage four years ago.

It’s not all suns and peach trees for the GOP, though. Though the Democrats have had their lead dramatically lessened, they’re still better trusted to handle the economy and health care reform, and viewed as caring more for people and as more honest and ethical. With characters like Charlie Rangel, John Murtha, Timothy Geithner, and a whole host of others, it’s tough to see how much longer that last perception will last. It is interesting to note that the poll respondents’ faith in the Democrats to handle the budget deficit has fallen by 19 points since September 2006, and that they have only a 4-point advantage in the party that can better manage government.

Though you get a general sense of the feeling of the voting populace, it’s hard to take anything concrete away from Congressional favorability polls and generic ballot match-ups. It’s usually the case that voters hate Congress but love their Congressmen, but clearly the Democrats have taken major hits, which spells trouble for Democrats in borderline districts.

It’s clear that the GOP has to do a better job of getting its message across. Throughout the entire August recess, Republicans have essentially relied on the common citizenry to make their point at town halls, with the occasional isolated comment on health care from the few Representatives and Senators who make time to do so. There’s been no concerted push from the RNC on health care, which make the drop in approval that much more amazing and more illustrative that opposition to the current health care bill is clearly more organic than astroturfed.

As tempting as it might be, Republicans can’t simply stand back and watch the Democrats implode. They need to do a better job at highlighting their own health care bill, HR 2520, and at articulating a unified agenda of positive action items. Attacking the myriad deficiencies of the Democratic agenda may be cathartic and satisfying, but it’s not enough to win back the trust of the electorate. Michael Steele, you can’t afford to be out to lunch on this one. Get on it, and get it right.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

In a must-read article on Big Hollywood, Patrick Courrielche relates his musing related to conference call on August 10th hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The call was aimed at “a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!”

During the call, the artists were thanked for their enthusiasm for the Obama campaign, reminded that they have the power to “shape the lives” of the people around them, and urged to create art and art initiatives that bring awareness to “core areas of the recovery agenda - health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”

Even more key is this passage:

Discussed throughout the conference call was a hope that this group would be one that would carry on past the United We Serve campaign to support the President’s initiatives and those issues for which the group was passionate. The making of a machine appeared to be in its infancy, initiated by the NEA, to corral artists to address specific issues. This function was not the original intention for creating the National Endowment for the Arts. 

A machine that the NEA helped to create could potentially be wielded by the state to push policy. Through providing guidelines to the art community on what topics to discuss and providing them a step-by-step instruction to apply their art form to these issues, the “nation’s largest annual funder of the arts” is attempting to direct imagery, songs, films, and literature that could create the illusion of a national consensus. This is what Noam Chomsky calls “manufacturing consent.”

I’m with Mr. Courrielchein his recognition of a huge conflict of interest when an taxpayer-funded arts organization joins up with the government that funds it to collaborate on an agenda. Moreover, he’s right to recognize the potential danger of the White House using the NEA to direct art campaigns as a kind of propaganda to sway the masses. If you need further proof, Courrielche provides it with this quote from the call:

This is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally?…bare with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely…

Political activism and collaboration with the government in disseminating a message doesn’t fit the mandate of a taxpayer-funded arts organization, and to see such a movement in its infancy is disturbing. It goes beyond a conflict of interest and becomes an dangerous game of propaganda, paid for by your tax dollars.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

According to a Gallup poll, more people now self-identify as conservative than as liberal in all 50 American states. 40% of respondents have called themselves “conservative” or “very conservative,” while 21% call themselves liberal, and 35% moderate. As I’ve noted before in these ideological surveys, it’s hard to gauge the strength of a “moderate” bloc, as it’s generally people who cherry-pick positions from both sides or have no strong opinions either way.

Alabama has, no surprise, the biggest conservative majority, 49%-15%. New York and New Jersey have 6-point margins, and Obama’s home state of Illinois has a margin of 35-23%. My own state of Ohio has a margin of 39%-19% according to the state-by-state breakdown, and 3 states have conservative leads within the margin of error - Massachusetts, Hawaii, and Vermont.

Perhaps not surprisingly, only one area polled with more liberals (37%-23%) - Washington, D.C. Perhaps that might be a cause for all the dissatisfaction in national politics, hmmm?

What’s odd about the results is that with these ideological leanings, Democrats still hold an advantage in party identification in 30 states compared to 4 states for Republicans. Some on the left might crow about that, but the disparity suggests a yet-to-be-realized shift away from the Democrats as they move farther to the left in both rhetoric and policy. It is literally impossible to maintain power when you have an agenda that is opposite that of a majority of your constituents.

The ideological leanings illustrate another reason why Democrats, Blue Dog and otherwise, are becoming increasingly nervous over the health care debate. They know that if the bill is pushed too far to the left (as it would be with a public option), they’ll face the wrath of a voting public that isn’t on their side. This is where the Democrats complete lack of a centrist bipartisan agenda has harmed them since the 2008 election. Speaker Pelosi seems to be driving the push toward liberal interests that may please big party donors, but will ultimately severely harm the standing of the Democratic Party.

The Gallup analysis exposes a weakness that the GOP would be wise to exploit - if Democrats are found to be too liberal, they will not survive in an electoral environment poisonous to their agenda. So far they’ve been able to pass themselves off as moderate and centrist, but all that needs to be done is demonstrate the disparity between perception and reality as the Democratic Party has taken advantage of its majority to push through a raft of liberal agenda items.

It’s cause for optimism, but complacency is too tempting a path to ignore. If the GOP is too weak or mismanaged to take advantage of the nature of the American character, then it won’t matter at all that conservatives are in the decisive majority.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

Rep. Steve Dreihaus and Rep. Steve Kagan are two of the latest Congressmen to feel the wrath of their constituents over health care reform, cap and trade, and other issues. Meanwhile, the push is on to trivialize and demonize the backlash that’s going on at local town hall meetings. The DNC released a statement blaming Republicans for riling up “angry mobs of a small number of rabid right wing extremists” being bussed in and well-funded by lobbyists. It’s not grassroots, you see, it’s astroturf.(A quick aside: Can we ban the use of the word astroturf by both sides of the political aisle. It’s lame, overused and cliched already, and it’s only been in rotation for a few months.)

In addition to the DNC, you have pundits like Rachel Maddow whining about the “hooliganism” of protesters at the same time the White House releases a video with former ABC reporter Linda Douglass accusing opponents of health care reform of using scare tactics, and specifically targets a spliced-together video that’s gone viral showing President Obama and others in their own words speaking of their desire for a single-payer system.

This is all while the White House health czar has put out a call for reports on health care disinformation on the web. Rhetorical question: what do you think the reaction would have been from the left if President Bush had asked for reports on disinformation on the Patriot Act? It all adds up to a push to paint the very real opposition to health care reform as extremist and imaginary, since no real American could have strong feelings against health care reform, right?

What is left out is that, yes, most Americans know we don’t have a perfect system, and want the costs of health care to go down. That doesn’t then mean that you can assume they all want a costly government health insurance plan to take care of everyone. The fact is that opposition to the government option is very real and very potent. Health care insurance reform supporters (as they’re being re-termed) are overstating the ability of the right to coordinate and organize in the same manner that the left does. I’ve seen the videos and I’ve been to the Tea Parties - by and large, these aren’t paid activists from out of town, these are local folks who have strong concerns about the direction of the country. You would think with the falling poll numbers the left would at least entertain the idea that opposition to their ideas is possible.

But the easier path is to ignore the concerns and paint the opposition as extremist and irrelevant. It’s an approach that shamefully sidesteps any debate on the issues involved with health care reform and goes straight to the line of thought that says, “It’s my way or nothing at all, so just shut up otherwise.” The left seems to have forgotten its own mantra of the last eight years - dissent, I suppose, is only patriotic when it’s a liberal engaging in it. When conservatives do it, it’s just obstructionism and hate. It makes political debates much easier when you can utilize painful black-and-white thinking like this to avoid defending your own ideas and policies.

And in any event, the wailing over the protests is just a tad hypocritical from supporters of a President who told them during the campaign he wanted them to “get in the face” of their friends and neighbors. Aggressive and impassioned campaigning, you see, is only reserved for one side of the fight. But despite what they might say publicly, politicians and pundits recognize that the backlash is real, and that’s why they are fighting back so hard against it and to mischaracterize its reality and the impact on both health care reform and the politicans who vote for it.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.

As the Senate wraps up its business and the House heads home for vacation, the debate over health care reform continues. Central to the Democrats’ selling of their health care proposal is the notion that their “public option” won’t lead to government takeover of health care and won’t lead to the destruction of private insurance.

The only problem is that their own words contradict it. In a spliced together video, President Obama, Rep. Barney Frank, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky are all caught on tape telling what they hope will happen with health care (Hot Air and Michelle Malkin have it). In a SEIU health care forum, President Obama speaks of not being able to eliminate employer coverage immediately, and in a 2003 speech before AFL-CIO, he says he’s a proponent of a single-payer system. Rep. Frank says a public option is the best way to get a single-payer system, and Rep. Schakowsky practically crows about the fact that a government plan will destroy the private insurance industry (which we pointed out back in May).

Some would argue that none of those goals is a bad thing. My question is then, why not be open about it? Why not just come out and say that the plan is move to a single-payer system, to get rid of those evil private insurance companies, and to admit that the model is a European or Canadian one? The answer is that if that agenda were put to voice, the American public would react with even more vigorous rebuttal than it’s currently displaying. So at the heart of the matter, there is a certain dishonesty in motive and design in selling the public plan, as if a government plan would have no impact at all on employer coverage or on private insurance companies.

This same cognitive dissonance leads to the recent mixed signals on tax increases. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Obama economic advisor Larry Summers (who had just finished Googling the topic of the day) left the door open for tax increases on their respective news shows, leaving it to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to assure the press that, yes, the President would keep his pledge to keep taxes low. The rub is that tax revenues are already declining, and to pay for such a massive increase in the size of government, the funds must come from somewhere, and you can only soak the rich for so much.

It all comes down to messaging. The proponents of the public option can’t be honest and say they hope government runs the private insurers out of town, and they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that what they’re asking for isn’t cheap and must be paid for. Is health care reform necessary. You bet? But as I’ve stated before, trading a private bureaucracy for a government one isn’t reform - it’s cost-shuffling that doesn’t attack the fundamental cost of care. And, as the President, Rep. Frank, and Rep. Schakowsky state, at some point, perhaps not immediately, but some years removed, it will indeed lead to the single-payer state and the disappearance of private health insurance.

If that’s the goal, and such a noble one, then be honest about it.

Cross-posted at Wellsy’s World.