We have learned much from this health care debacle. We learned that liberals will act in spite of the will of their constituents. We learned that elected officials really do have a price. We learned that Obama and the Democratic party truly do not believe in bipartisanship. Most troubling, we understand now more than ever that our government is not afraid to act against the will and without the consent of the governed.
We're from the government and we're here to help
One of the most fundamental concerns about a government health care system is simply the level of trust you have in your government. The vast majority of polling over the last six months indicates that the American people did not support this particular health care overhaul. But on a much broader scale, Americans do not trust their government to begin with.
In fact, a CNN/Opinion Research poll found that only 26% of Americans trust the federal government always or most of the time. That number is as low as was in 1994, when Republicans won control of both Houses of Congress. Americans do not feel comfortable handing the reins over to a government whose largest programs, specifically Social Security, Medicare, and the Postal Service, lie in state of disrepair.
"Pro-Life" Democrats Have a Price
Bart Stupak (D-MI), once thought of as a pro-life champion, proved that his pro-life credentials could be bought. Instead of actually having pro-life wording in the healthcare bill, Stupak settled for the mere promise of an executive order from Barack Obama. If Stupak is not spineless, he is certainly naive. We're talking about Barack Obama, the most pro-choice President in the history of America. Remember his first act as president? It was a pro-choice executive order.
Even as a State Senator, Obama had a sterling pro-choice record, supporting partial-birth abortion and procedures that border on infanticide. During his time in the U.S. Senate, he received a 100% rating from NARAL. This is not the man you go to looking for an executive order that supports the sanctity of life. It is no wonder that the Susan B. Anthony List has rescinded their "Defender of Life" award to Stupak.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Matthew T. Sussman
Kinda tired of people expressing their hatred of the legislation without refuting certain parts of it. At least the Republican congressmen had the decency to do that, sorta.
I'm cynically optimistic myself, but rejecting it outright on principle is counterproductive.
2 - zingzing
so conservatives now make up "the governed." curious. i forgot that liberals no longer voted. or at least i wasn't informed. let me mark it down. now where's my voting pen? oh, there it is. duly noted.
wait, it's not just voters, i guess. i'll mark it in my "i'm not an american anymore because i don't agree with braden" book. now where's my i'm not an american anymore because i don't agree with bradening pen? bradened.
maybe the liberals actually ARE working for the will of their constituents... you know, the ones who voted for them... and not you, the one who didn't vote for them. ever give that a thought?
you seem to think your point of view is the totality of american thought. sorry to say it's obviously not.
3 - El Bicho
Plenty of the governed wanted this so spare the absolute nonsense and I intend both meanings of that phrase
"We learned that elected officials really do have a price."
If you didn't know that before now, I am not sure how you consider yourself "specialized in politics". Sounds like you are, oh what's the word, "naive". Rep Cunningham (R) from San Diego had a price. Did that have you all a fluster?
"This health care legislation has proven to be the most divisive issue for this country in the past twenty years."
True and both sides are too blame. Putting it just on one side is disingenuous.
"A lot can happen in eight months."
Credit where it is due. This is one of the few things you have right so any political predictions are awfully premature and rather pointless.
4 - Dave Nalle
Perhaps we can just say "majority of the governed" - that's certainly accurate.
Dave
5 - El Bicho
No it isn't. Try "the majority in some polls"
6 - Cobra
I don't understand. Barack Obama campaigned for two years with universal health care being the core of his social platform. He debated with Hilary Clinton and other Democrats 22 times, where they detailed ad nauseum their universal health care plans(yeah, Hilary had one too, remember?) And with that knowlege, 53% of the electorate voted for Obama.
President Obama achieved much of what he said he was going to do about health care, like it or not. You cannot accuse him of fooling people. It should come as no shock that he was going to push health care reform in the first year.
He delivered on a promise. And I truly believe that only the disinformation campaign of the health care lobby, Fox News and hate radio is causing the perception that this bill is something other than a close cousin of Bob Dole(R) & Howard Baker's(R) alternative to Clinton's proposal in 1993, or Romneycare in Mass.
Don't take my word for it, though...
"But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994."
David Frum, Former Bush Speech Writer
As Frum, no liberal, explains, the GOP had AMPLE opportunities to come to the table on this bill (which by the way, has 200 Republican Amendments)
"A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.
At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo â€" just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994."
The GOP set their strategy. Democrats weren't just "wrong" or "misguided". That's not enough red-meat for the base. They were depicted as the EVIL EMPIRE
by the RNC in their fund raisers, complete with mocking cartoons and graphics of Obama, Pelosi and Reid. The catch words and phrases spread like wildfire.."Socialist","Communist", "Marxist", "Hitler"...
Well, the problem is...you can't call somebody all of those things and then be seen negotiating with him. A pact with the "devil" never turns out well in literature.
--Cobra
7 - Dave Nalle
Perhaps "the majority in every poll that's not designed to produce a biased result."
Dave
8 - cannonshop
7: Dave, put it like it is:the people who wanted a free ride on the backs of their neighbours won.
Fact is, the Leeches outnumber us, Dave, nothing will come out of this, it's over, the mobs have figured out that they can vote themselves largesse from the treasury-after all, we're talking about Democrats here, and they don't pay taxes.
9 - jeannie danna
cannonshop,
This is what you really think?
Fact is, the Leeches outnumber us, it's
over, the mobs have figured out that they can vote themselves largesse from the treasury-after all, we're talking about Democrats here, and they don't pay taxes.
sad...
10 - El Bicho
One more thing:
"the only thing bipartisan about this health care bill was its opposition."
On CNN Sunday night Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, "there are two hundred amendments that were offered and accepted by Republicans, offered by Republicans and accepted by Democrats and incorporated into this bill. This is a bill that is bipartisan in content"
That contradicts what you say. I don't know the answer but can you dispute her claims?
11 - Ruvy
I cannot believe what I'm reading!
After over 6 months of torturous article after torturous bullshit article on the grab of one sixth of your economy called "health care reform", you are all now arguing over the detritus like rats over a vomited up squirrel!! Two articles or more on this garbage!
Nobody cares about your liberals or conservatives or libertarians or socialists. The world is waiting to see when it can feast on the corpse of what was once the most powerful nation on earth.
And not a one of you can see this!
Not a single one of you wants to - or is capable of - looking beyond your own shores to see the economic disaster brewing in Europe or consider how the refusal of your major creditors to lend you more money on stupid projects - like a grab of one sixth of the economy under government control - will send you over the cliff.
I begin to comprehend now how it was that the Romans fell to the Visigoths and other barbarians. It wasn't that they couldn't fight the Visigoths - they were mentally incapable of realizing the threat until it was way too late.
And it is obvious that you too, are mentally incapable of seeing the knife of History at your own throats.
Only after History has slit your throats open and you are gurgling in your death throes, will you begin to comprehend. Then, of course, it will be too late.
And that is how the mighty, who think they will last forever, are brought down to the dust. Have a pleasant day! There won't be too many more pleasant ones left to you.
12 - Mark
It's deceptive to talk about a 'will of the governed' that is in any way independent of the political process.
13 - roger nowosielski
Except in an ideal world, perhaps, as per Rousseau's "general will"?
14 - Jordan Richardson
I don't see how a bill can be considered bipartisan when not one single Republican voted for it. And I don't see that it matters if the thing was bipartisan, either.
Fuck 'em. The whole reason this bill is such a wreck is that the Democrats kowtowed to the Republican agenda. And the Republicans only had designs on squashing it and pissing on it from the start, no matter what "concessions" were in it to appease their boneheaded constituents.
15 - jeannie danna
This is absolutly false and here is the link.
There's only one problem: all of the ones she mentioned had bipartisan voting support, health care did not. In fact, the only thing bipartisan about this health care bill was its opposition.
The Republicans have been here every step of the way, beginning with Theodore Roosevelt in the 1900's.
16 - jeannie danna
Yes, I wish we didn't have any boneheaded people in this country...
17 - Dr. Guillotin
I'm sure that we could arrange some humane solution to boneheadedness.
18 - Ruvy
Braden, et al,
Wake up boys and girls! This Mail-On-line article by Mary-Ellen Synon explains the nature of the leader you have chosen.
Let's have a look, shall we?
One of the reasons a lot of Americans find Obama oddly foreign is that he had an oddly foreign childhood: his formative years were spent in Indonesia. His half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born there. The rest of Obama's childhood was spent in Honolulu, a Pacific Ocean capital soaked in East Asian culture.
.........Obama is the first US president who was raised without cultural or emotional or intellectual ties to either Britain or Europe. The British and the Europeans have been so enchanted with 'America's first black president' that they haven't been able to see what he really is: America's first Third World president.
The article goes on to point out how Obama has ditched Britain, France and Germany, detailing how he has decided that Maggie Thatcher's victory in the Falklands ought be reversed - and that the islands ought to become las islas malvinas after all, with the blessing of a UN stamp and watermark.
Obama has ditched Israel, Poland and other putative allies, all in favor of this Third World multi-racial New World Order - financed by George Soros.
Mary-Ellen has more to say about Obama worth remembering:
Remember, Obama is a deracinated individual. He has no roots. He is a man from an Asian-Pacific background bred to no admiration for the ancient constitutional history which, until now, has reached across the Atlantic to bind America and Britain.
The president actually feels that the US Constitution, which grew out of Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights, is 'inadequate.'
Indeed, Obama has stated that, because the US Constitution guarantees only 'negative rights' -- that is, establishes what the US Government may not do to individuals or to the sovereign states -- instead of giving people guarantees of food, shelter education and health care and the rest, it is 'inadequate.'
That is one reason he has worked so hard to get the health care legislation through Congress. It is undoubtedly unconstitutional. Already, the attorneys-general of Florida and South Carolina are poised to challenge its constitutionality in court. At least another dozen state attorneys-general may join in the suit.
Obama has made it clear he despises both the US Constitution and the British tradition from which it springs.
Now don't react by digging your nose into the constitution and arguing over it. React by looking across and away from your own borders, and start understanding that this fellow Obama/Soetoro - a man who really does not want you to know who he is - is doing nothing for your benefit at all....
IN other words, this has nothing to do with the Republicrats in congress. This has to do with imposing a vision of your country that you will discover is very different from your own - and very foreign to you. When your new lords and masters from the Third World and China start to lord it over you as you try to recover from the wrecked economy the oil and banking establishment has left you - only then will understand how you have been purposely impoverished - only then will you understand what suckers you have been played for.
19 - Ruvy
If you want an American vision of all this, you can read what Mike Ledeen has to say about an American Dictatorship. Enjoy the read.
20 - Dave Nalle
The Republicans have been here every step of the way, beginning with Theodore Roosevelt in the 1900's.
Yes, Jeannie. Republicans have a history of supporting sensible expansion of access to medical care for all Americans. What does that have to do with this bill?
Dave
21 - Doug Hunter
What's not to like?
-Let's see, it mandates 32 million new customers to insurance companies while requiring them to sell higher priced plans. There is a new tax on them, but there's also a couple trillion to be placed on the Chinese credit card (if it ain't maxed out) and handed to the aforementioned insurers to balance things out.
-There's 32 million new customers and little in the way of plans for new doctor's, hospitals, and infrastructure. Certainly demand creates supply, but it does that by raising prices going against the stated goal of the bill to lower costs. The only way it gets the farcical 'affordable' in it's title is for those who are getting someone else to pay for theirs (it's always affordable when someone else pays).
We've got a plan that increases taxes, increases the deficit, gives a massive handout to health megacorps, increases healthcare demand without a corresponding increase in supply, and eliminates choice... great job America!!!
22 - Baronius
Ruvy, conservatives like Mark Steyn see the connection between this issue and our international power. He says:
...governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there's plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.
More prosaically, it's also unaffordable. That's why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it's less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we'll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America's enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.
23 - jeannie danna
It's good for some of us not to have any roots weighing us down, Ruvy.
This bill was written by both parties, House, and Senate, Dave.
24 - Glenn Contrarian
C-shop -
we're talking about Democrats here, and they don't pay taxes.
WHHHAAAAAATTT?!?!?!?
If that's the case, then the government needs to repay me a few hundred thousand dollars I've paid in taxes over the years!
BTW - did you know that generally speaking, blue states PAY more federal taxes then they receive from the federal government...and red states generally RECEIVE more federal money than they pay in taxes? Here's the census.gov article.
Ah, but don't listen to me - protect your illusions, C-shop!
25 - jeannie danna
Thank you , Glenn, I'm not the only one insulted by that little dig.