[Mark Steyn]
I don’t like to say I told you so, but I’ve been saying for months now that the trick is to drag this thing across the finish line with 50.0000000000001 per cent of the vote as soon as possible. From my “Happy Warrior” column in NR back in July:
Obama believes in “the fierce urgency of now”, and fierce it is. That’s where all the poor befuddled sober centrists who can’t understand why the Democrats keep passing incoherent 1,200-page bills every week are missing the point. If “health care” were about health care, the devil would be in the details. But it’s not about health or costs or coverage; it’s about getting over the river and burning the bridge. It doesn’t matter what form of governmentalized health care gets passed as long as it passes. Once it’s in place, it will be “reformed”, endlessly, but it will never be undone.
Right now, they can trade anything - abortion, death panels, whatever. The trick is to plant the seed and let the ratchet effect of Big Government take care of the rest. I said on Rush’s show on Friday that if Barack Obama had been Bill Clinton he’d have woken up on Wednesday morning and begun triangulating. Instead, Obama woke up and figured that he needed more fierce urgency, and right now. The short-term hit in 2010 is worth it for the long-term benefits: Obscure congressmen will be just as happy as obscure ambassadors or obscure chairmen of obscure agencies. And the prize of permanent irreversible statist annexation merits the risk: Governmentalized “health care” puts us on the fast track to Euro-sclerosis and redefines the relationship between citizen and state in ways that make genuine conservative politics all but impossible.
Will the Senate stop it? And, if they don’t, will a post-2010 GOP Congress reverse it? The way they reversed, say, the federal Department of Education?
Thanks...I have to be an eternal optimist...not to a fault, but as one who believes God needs and deserves our believe He’ll come through.
I don’t like to say I told you so, but I’ve been saying for months now that the trick is to drag this thing across the finish line with 50.0000000000001 per cent of the vote as soon as possible. From my “Happy Warrior” column in NR back in July:
Obama believes in “the fierce urgency of now”, and fierce it is. That’s where all the poor befuddled sober centrists who can’t understand why the Democrats keep passing incoherent 1,200-page bills every week are missing the point. If “health care” were about health care, the devil would be in the details. But it’s not about health or costs or coverage; it’s about getting over the river and burning the bridge. It doesn’t matter what form of governmentalized health care gets passed as long as it passes. Once it’s in place, it will be “reformed”, endlessly, but it will never be undone.
Right now, they can trade anything - abortion, death panels, whatever. The trick is to plant the seed and let the ratchet effect of Big Government take care of the rest. I said on Rush’s show on Friday that if Barack Obama had been Bill Clinton he’d have woken up on Wednesday morning and begun triangulating. Instead, Obama woke up and figured that he needed more fierce urgency, and right now. The short-term hit in 2010 is worth it for the long-term benefits: Obscure congressmen will be just as happy as obscure ambassadors or obscure chairmen of obscure agencies. And the prize of permanent irreversible statist annexation merits the risk: Governmentalized “health care” puts us on the fast track to Euro-sclerosis and redefines the relationship between citizen and state in ways that make genuine conservative politics all but impossible.
Will the Senate stop it? And, if they don’t, will a post-2010 GOP Congress reverse it? The way they reversed, say, the federal Department of Education?