Most Historic Tantrum EVAH

The only memorable moment of a load of partisan bullshit, and it wasn't anything Lucifer said:

Was Joe Wilson's (R-SC) outburst horrible?  Rude?  "Uncivil"?  By traditional standards, yes.  It wasn't something that I would have done in his place (I would have come equipped with my daughter's IPOD and earphones).  But that has more to do with differing personalities than it does ideological divergence.  Which is a round-about way of saying that while I probably would have exercised more self control than Congressman Wilson did, I can understand why he reached a boiling point beyond which he just couldn't suffer in affronted silence any more.

Besides, on the substance, Wilson was absolutely correct.  And still, for whatever reason, he did apologize:

“This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the President’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill. While I disagree with the President’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the President for this lack of civility.”

Just as I would have clamped down on my lips even if I had to bite my tongue in half to do it, neither would I have apologized afterwards if I had let fly - at least not until those slimy petaQ'pu on that dais behind the rostrum apologized on behalf of their entire party for their month-long vomit fountain of arrogance, insults, put-downs, slanders, and outright violence.  After all, shouldn't "civility" be a two-way street?

If not, then what Joe Wilson offered up is piker territory compared to past standard DisLoyal Opposition fare:

I don't recall any Donk apologies following this "uncivil" display.  Any more than when Ted Kennedy accused Bush of continuing Saddam Hussein's "torture chambers," or Harry Reid calling Bush a "loser," or Louisiana Donk Senator Mary Landrieu threatening to punch Bush in the face after Hurricane Katrina, etc., etc., etc.  After the eight years of sheer hatred shat upon Dubya, the best atonement they could have made would have been to not field a 2008 presidential candidate and concede the election to John McCain unopposed.

Instead we got this asshole inflicted upon us, one of whose objectives in this partisan screed I'm convinced was precisely to provoke outraged reactions like Joe Wilson's in order to resucitate their "demagoging the hell out of every protester in sight" narrative.  Because a little honesty, a little humility, and the sort of unifying "bring us all together" rhetoric that he dangled in front of us during the campaign was just too much to ask.

Mark Noonan asked a very salient question I haven't seen raised anywhere else:

[J]ust what were we GOPers doing in Congress last night? We were merely a prop - something to allow Obama to look more impressive as he peddled his falsehoods about health care. Wilson should not have jumped up, but Wilson should not have been there - no Republican should have. This wasn’t a speech of grave national importance where all Americans must pay heed…this was just a campaign event by a politician who is down in the polls and looking for a means to reshape the debate in his favor.

Maybe they could have compromised and stayed until the first whopper, and then walked out en masse.  Now THAT would have made an effective visual.

We know why they didn't, of course: because then the Dems could have seized upon it as "proof" that Republicans don't want to be part of "fixing" the health care "crisis".  But then what is staying in that process getting them?  Their numerous alternative bills are buried in committee and ignored by the Obamedia in order to perpetuate the "Republicans have no plan" narrative.  Dems aren't interested in genuinely "working with" them but rather want them as human shields against voter anger that would follow passage of any BarryCare bill.  The very "go it alone" concept - the same one they employed on Hogzilla and, in the House, cap & tax - all but screams, "Go home, we don't want you here." 

Besides, given the burgeoning public opposition to not just BarryCare but the whole Obama domestic agenda, and the like collapse of his and his party's poll numbers, I'd think a very symbolic public separation would have been greeted with resounding public approval, if not deafening cheers.  Heck, the goofy expression on his face would alone of have been worth it.

It certainly would have cost Joe Wilson a lot less.

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Speaking of having no plan, The Hill heralded the next GOP rallying cry - "Mr. President, where is your plan?":

President Barack Obama’s address to Congress on healthcare reform was short on specifics and long on ideas he and his advisers had already floated this year.

The historic speech left some liberals wanting more details and conservatives emboldened to torpedo the president’s top domestic priority. …

Still, while the speech once again illustrated the president’s extraordinary oratory skills, it was not a game changer and appears to leave the president with the same quandary:  Healthcare has become the pinnacle legislative issue of his first term, but has divided his party in Congress and run into almost universal GOP opposition. Polls suggest Americans are not convinced reform will help their lives and it is unclear whether the legislation Obama seeks will reach his desk.

Obama was expected to take the wheel on healthcare reform after the Democratic-led Congress drove it into a ditch over the summer, but it did not appear he did so.

In retrospect, is anybody surprised that he didn't bring his own version of his, um, own signature domestic initiative to the table?  For crying out loud, how long did it take Hillary Clinton's infamous health care task force to sausageize ClintonCare a decade and a half ago?  Eight months?  And now THIS White House was going to do the same thing in a week?

Obama's whole strategy from the beginning was to let the Pelosi/Reid Politburo do the heavy lifting while he went around (and around, and around, and around) the country selling the generalized high (or low, depending upon your point of view) points to the "adoring" public.  Even if he had dropped his own thousand-page stack of Sanskrit on the rostrum like President Reagan once did the federal budget, it would have been just one more entry in the hopper.

Unless, that is, he had been willing to do the only thing that would have made this speech a game-changer - pull a Schwartzeneggar by coming before the nation, humbly acknowledging that "The American people have spoken," and doing what he led the public to believe would be the hallmark of his presidency: reaching out in unity and bipartisanship.  How many 'Pubbies would have bought it is anybody's guess, but the Blue Dogs would certainly have "come home," and it's the Left which would have been both marginalized and seen as the obstructionist villains if they torpedoed a health care "reform" bill that omitted the public option.  And in the mean time, it would have still moved the health care bill further in the single-payer direction.

As I suspected, he just didn't have it in him:

Even if Obama didn’t have his own plan at the ready, he had an outlet to claim the middle.  Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) just produced his own plan, one which keeps mandates but eliminates the public option, a component that has gotten less support from the administration in the last couple of weeks.  Had Obama wanted, he could have just pointed to the Baucus plan as a start on a reasonable compromise.  Instead, Obama never mentioned Baucus once in his speech, and doubled down on the public option instead.

One of the cardinal rules of any negotiation is to have in mind what you want and what you're willing to settle for.  That leaves you room to make concessions that won't break the deal and helps lengthen the time you can stay in the negotation in the hopes of outlasting the other side - another cardinal negotiating rule.

Red Barry's mistake was in believing the hype that he was more than just a president, that he would be able to get anything he wanted from a Donk SuperCongress that would be his own personal rubber stamp, and that the American people were permanently zomby-ized.  Strike 1, strike 2, strike 3.  He never imagined that the public that he mesmerized with all that campaign hopeychanginess would take offense to being swindled and lied to, and then bullied and insulted.  It never occurred to him that the non-liberals in GOP leaning districts upon which his party's congressional majorities were constructed in 2006 and 2008 might feel the heat of that public anger and get cold feet.  And he never anticipated having his oratorical prowess put to the test of having to reconcile two irreconcilable positions within his own party upon which he publicly (and foolishly) staked the viability of his presidency - and epically failing that test.

~  ~  ~

That's as good an explanation for the shrill, angry, whiny tone of what I've dubbed the Hypocritic Oath as any - though there is more than one:

Never has a president been warped by Washington quicker. At times tonight, Obama sounded like an embattled second-termer with a 35% approval rating. What percentage of his speech was spent lashing out at his enemies, real and imagined? Radio and cable-television pundits, George W. Bush, former Congresses, unnamed ghouls employing “scare tactics,” whose “only agenda is to stop reform at any cost”—they’re all against him, Obama said. And they’re lying.

This isn’t how confident leaders speak. These are the complaints of a man on his way to bitterness. So soon?

As opposed to an embattled single-termer with a 45% approval rating heading for a 35% approval rating.  Gee, who'd have the greater justification for being bitter?

But then, just as Barack Obama couldn't accept the necessity of hitting the health care reset button, so he brought the situation that demanded that acceptance upon himself.  Both are the inevitable products of the very factors against which we "bitter clingers" warned during last year's campaign - his immaturity and inexperience:

What Carlson sees is a man completely unprepared for the fact that he can’t sell refrigerators to Eskimos.  Whether that comes from a narcissistic personality or just plain inexperience, the fact remains that Obama has reacted poorly to the rapid disintegration of his own popularity and that of his policies.  Like a petulant child, Obama has assumed that the problem is that he hasn’t spoken often or loudly enough, which is one of the reasons that his speeches on health care have not changed an iota in substance but have gotten louder and angrier in tone.....[I]t’s the bitterness of a man who may have been told no for the first time in his political life, and clearly doesn’t know how to react to it.

If there's any solace to be had for a jilted faux deity, it's that his "supposedly historic, hyper-hyped, Beyond Thunderdome Obama mega-event" drew comparative Hasselhoff numbers.  Though you can bet he won't see it that way.