HCR, the turning point
This Jay Cost article indicates what we already sensed: that the passage of health care reform turned out to have been a sort of Rubicon on the part of the Democrats in Congress. When they decided to cross it, the almost inevitable result was their decline in the polls.
Apparently, many of them believed their leaders when they said that the American public would learn to love HCR if it were passed—although why anyone would credit such as idea is beyond me. You can’t say the signs of voter anger and discontent weren’t obvious from the start, long before the bill was passed by a perverted legislative process that sickened the American people even more than the bill itself (which is saying something).
In fact, it was a little over a year ago, during the town hall meetings of summer, that the Congressional Democrats learned just how little the public thought of their HCR proposals. The anger of the energized crowds was visible and powerful, and it came from groups not usually given to public displays of rebellion. But most Democrats in Congress reacted by either ignoring or insulting their constituents, a course of action that is not usually considered the path to electoral victory.
So why should they be surprised now at the dismal polls? Maybe they’re just surprised at the extent of the gap that appears to have opened up. At least for now, the Republicans have sprinted to an “unprecedented” double-digit (51% vs. 41%) lead in the Gallup generic poll, for the first time since such polls were first taken in 1942.
My personal hope is that there is still enough of an obstinate streak running through the American people that the taste of being FORCED to purchase something by the federal government will lead to a negative sea change in attitudes towards the democrat party.
Such a push back would go a long way towards restoring government to the proper role in society, with subsequent generations of politicians always looking nervously back to the elections of 2010 and 2012 as a warning that you can only ignore the will of the people for so long.
It certainly beats having to take more drastic measures to achieve the same type of rollback…..
RubiconYalu River.Occam’s Beard: I wondered about my use of “Rubicon” when I wrote the piece, but I kept it in there because of this:
It’s apt because many people think it’s a point of no return for the US, as well—that is, that it can’t or won’t be repealed. I think (and hope) otherwise.
Seniors woke up to the extremism of the Democrat party.
No they don’t want their children to go to war (even though there are merits to changing Iraq).
No they don’t want Social Security to be privatized (even though there are merits to doing so – like ownership)
But to see the decline of America and the generational theft that they NEVER thought they’d see.. To the tunes of trillions of dollars. Remember the budget was less than 10 Billion before 1930. Now it’s 4 Trillion??
Personal responsibility is something that needs to be restored.
Seniors see this.
They may count on Americans getting addicted to the comfort of the idea of health care always there, even if the quality is low and the cost is high. It worked in Europe. It could happen here. Once people expect something without directly observable cost, they treat it as if it is “free,” and feel entitled to it. Americans likely have learned to resist that attitude longer than most, but we could well go down that road too. The more we can cut back quickly on HCR the better off we’ll be. Time is not on our side.
It’s apt because many people think it’s a point of no return for the US, as well–that is, that it can’t or won’t be repealed. I think (and hope) otherwise.
Neo, I understand. I just threw in the Yalu River reference as anti-Communist snark.
I think it’s important to keep hammering on the notion that the Democrat Party has been hijacked by the Reds, because…well, it’s true.
No they don’t want Social Security to be privatized (even though there are merits to doing so – like ownership)
This preference for defined benefits later continues to astonish me. Do people not grasp that something that can be granted can also be denied? And that once you’ve held up your end of the deal, you can only hope that the other side will hold up theirs, perhaps decades later?
It’s crazy, especially because you don’t have to anticipate this scenario; many people have lived it. In essence, an entity offering a defined benefit is saying, “We promise to give a free pony (*cough*if we’re still around then, which we probably won’t be*cough*).” And people buy that? No wonder they direct telescopes out into space to look for intelligent life: there’s precious little of it here.
The Democrats are cynical but not stupid. If they can survive this election and the next one after it (and they’ll claim they have-even if they lose 50 seats) the theory goes that the American people will acclimatize to HCR and then become dependant on it. And they aren’t wrong. New Orleans, New York, Detroit, Chicago all are testaments to the culture of dependancy. Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece. It seems to that once the infection sets in, it spreads quickly and captures the populace into indolence.
As Mitch Daniels says, “All of us need to do everything we can to stop it, delay it, and limit it in any way that we can.”
I think we’re in for a long fiscal insurgency.
Occam’s Beard,
Not sure I’d want to use the reference to the Yalu river to describe what the Obamobots have done.
If I remember correctly, while US forces didn’t cross the Yalu, the Red Chinese did.
That move turned out fairly well for the communists…..
I’m kind of sort of hoping that this turns out to not be the case this time around for Obongo.
If I remember correctly, while US forces didn’t cross the Yalu, the Red Chinese did.
Yep, that was the idea: the Reds crossing the Yalu.
You’re right that the reference fails after that.
New Orleans, New York, Detroit, Chicago all are testaments to the culture of dependancy.
Yes, indeed. They’re all to one extent or another, a festering pit of a city. NYC is the least like that, but NYC also has had some sort of Republican in the Mayor’s office over the last 16 years, and Rudy lead a drive to clean up Time Square. The rest? wholely owned and operated subsidaries of the Democrat Party.
Which is why New Orleans still has problems, and Detroit is busy tearing down sections of their city to turn into…farmland.
The Progressives don’t care about rank & file Democrats. Their big bills got done and won’t be undone, or so they believe.
If a few Dems in unsafe seats are tossed in the process, that’s okay – there will be plenty of jobs in government after the necessary regs are implemented.
Bill West,
“…there will be plenty of jobs in government after the necessary regs are implemented”
Which is yet another good reason for the congress in 2011 to begin the wholesale dismantling of vast government bureaucracies.
If there ain’t a government agency there, then you certainly can’t get a job with them!
As a nice side effect, I would imagine selling off those government assets (buildings, vehicles, furniture, land, etc.) that had been used by the (hopefully) eliminated agencies could raise a tidy sum to go towards paying off at least a portion of the debt that the Obomocrats racked up in the past year or so.
As a matter of fact, that could be a nice way of marketing to the general public just such a move!
Excuse the nerd reference, but I’m reminded of Gandalf on the bridge in Moria. He turns and confronts the hideous balrog pursuing them and says with all the power he can muster, “You shall not pass!”
When Scott Brown, in Massaschusetts of all places, running for the seat occupied by Ted Kennedy of all seats, in a state with its own version of ObamaCare (and its associated problems), was elected it was rightly read as a “You shall not pass!” moment. The mood and will of voters (especially following the results of the governors races in Virginia and New Jersey) was crystal clear. “We do not want this!” “You shall not pass!”
And the Democrats’ response was a hearty “F*** you. You’re getting it anyway. Even if we have to pervert the legislative process to do it.” Remember “Deem and Pass”? No one with an ounce of self-respect as a citizen and a voter would (or should) take kindly to that attitude. The Democrats did cross a Rubicon that day. At least they started across. Hopefully they’ll drown (metaphorically) before they get to the other side. It’s no surprise that’s it’s been downhill for them ever since. To use another old adage, may their apparent victory in late March turn out to be an entirely Pyrrhic one.