Health Wars (9/14/09)

My fellow Americans, when the New York Times starts playing taps for the "public option," including minimizing it to try and put over that its death from the BarryCare monstrosity whose demise is close behind it is no big deal for the same Barack Obama who spent months making it the heart of health care "reform," you know that the second attempted health care putsch in the U.S. in the past fifteen years has reached the same terminal stage as its predecessor.

These days, that qualifies as a good day indeed.

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Another day, another speech, another ludicrously skewed Obamedia poll still showing public support for BarryCare continuing to evaporate.  Looks like The Chosen One needs a "game-changer".

Oh, yeah, never mind....

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Ya know, back in the Clinton detour it was perpetually frustrating to do battle with the Left because they always seemed to run rings around us.  Republicans controlled Congress but never figured out how to use that control and its weapons to any measurable partisan effect in wounding and neutering Sick Willie.  The post-government shutdown debacle Speaker Gingrich (followed by Bob Livingston and Denny Hastert) and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott plodded along while Mr. Bill and his good ol' boys got away with rhetoric and policy and scandals that beggared belief.  I always thought he should have used the Gingerbread Man as his official mascot:

And, of course, we never caught him.

What is so amazing about the current Donk hegemony - and makes it all the more appalling that the GOP lost the government to these morons in the first place - is that their arrogance is so stupendous and blinding, their left-wing extremism so vast and smothering, that it has killed their political acumen stone cold dead.  To where, now that the political speculative bubble known as "hopenchange" has popped, their public relations incompetence is so incorrigible that they have become their own worst enemies.

Risible case in point:

Representative Carol Shea-Porter lashed out at South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson for his outburst before a joint session of Congress last week and at Republicans in general for vocally opposing President Barack Obama’s health reform initiative while speaking at the Strafford County Democratic Party Picnic this weekend.

“They were behaving in a way we never behave,” Shea-Porter told the enthusiastic group of party faithful.

Shea-Porter claimed Democrats never interrupted President George W. Bush while he was addressing Congress.

“We sat there quietly and politely because that’s what we owe the President of the United States,” she said.

We've just got two words for ya, Carol (ugh) baby - YouTube:

And what's this "we" business, sweetheart?

Correction, we have four more words for ya: "Shut up" and, in a little under fourteen months, "Good bye".

UPDATE: Ensign Ed undercuts the whole purpose of his post on this topic by tut-tutting "a Republican series of catcalls during one of Bill Clinton’s SOTU speeches, when Clinton hailed numbers from the 'non-partisan CBO' that supported one of his policies."  Apparently I remember it better than he does, because what Clinton did was make the case for his proposed 1993 tax increase as being a "deficit reduction" measure, and after the GOP "catcalls" he sprung the CBO numbers on them, which caused an eruption of cheering from the Donk side of the aisle.

THAT is how you deal with "rudeness" and "incivility" during a joint congressional dress.  Evidently Barack Obama was too busy ACORNing that night to bother tuning in.

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I don't think there's much to add to this Pete Stark town hall performance....:

....except to say this: "Congressman Stark, PISS OFF!!!"

Oh, come on, you knew that was inevitable, dincha?  (Please, do not insert golden shower jokes here....)

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Remember when M-TV first came out almost thirty years ago?  Remember what one of their first slogans was?  "Too much is never enough."

Think Red Barry was paying attention?:

An unprecedented amount of overexposure, nearly realizing my dream of someday being able to turn on the tube and find him staring back as I scroll through every channel. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Univision (no Fox, natch), plus who knows? Maybe they’ll squeeze in an appearance on the Food Network, to talk about how important it is to have health insurance in case you accidentally put some tinfoil in the microwave or something.

That would be next Sunday's newstalk shows.  Which would make it fascinating to have one of those instant focus group meters as a TV screen widget to watch his and BarryCare's poll numbers accelerate downward literally by each extra minute his grinning rictus squats, uninvited, in front of a few hundred thousand bleary American eyes.  Hey, maybe his version of the V-Chip will enable him to take over our television screens literally, like in The Outer Limits.  Betcha it's written into BarryCare somewhere.

Think this face-shoving will work?  Jay Cost doubts it:

As of now, the conventional wisdom among the punditocracy is that the public option will be dropped as a way to pick up party moderates, under the assumption that the progressive caucus will go along for the ride. But will they? It is highly unlikely that all of them will. Most of them would presumably be willing to grant at least some small concessions to add votes - but how far are they willing to go? That depends upon individual legislators themselves, which means that - until you get to 218 in the House and 60/51 in the Senate - every concession the leadership makes had better add more moderates than it loses progressives. This is when legislative calculus begins to look like actual calculus!…

In general I am not sure how progressives are going to view any kind of compromise bill that attracts the moderates. Their attitude seems to be one of deep suspicion of the for-profit health industry. Take away the public option, but retain employer and/or individual mandates, and that looks like a big boon to the insurance companies. They might consider that an outright defeat. In that case, the normal calculations of compromise - you get half a loaf versus a whole loaf, but you’re still better off - would not apply. Progressives might think they have not gotten even half a loaf at all!

This points to one big problem with doing comprehensive reforms like this. Different factions have different diagnoses for what ails the system - and when a comprehensive bill is introduced, it inevitably favors one view over another. If the progressives’ view is on the losing end, they might think the bill does not do much of anything. And remember: the President wants to be the “last” to tackle this issue - meaning that the stakes are very high. So, if the progressives think the bill will further solidify the insurance industry’s hold over health care, they might bolt.

You can't talk chicken crap into chicken salad, your Majesty.  You wrote a health care "reform" check your insufficiently leftish majorities wouldn't cash.  You can't simultaneously lock Republicans out of the process, lament having to "go it alone," and then blame those same Republicans when they refuse to jump at the chance of becoming your patsies-on-command.

But don't feel bad, pal; at least you'll be stimulating the TV off-switch and mute-button industries.