Now that ObamaCare has been shown to be an incredibly expensive mistake that was relentlessly pursued by the White House while more important national issues were ignored, a number of Democrats are claiming that they were against it. Among them is Barney Frank:
I think we paid a terrible price for healthcare … I would not have pushed it as hard. As a matter of fact, after [Sen.] Scott Brown [R-Mass.] won [in January 2010], I suggested going back. I would have started with financial reform, but certainly not healthcare.
Of course, we heard nothing about his reservations when it counted, And he still doesn’t come clean about why people don’t like Obamacare:
Healthcare is enormously important to people. When you tell them that you’re going to extend healthcare to people who don’t now have it, they don’t see how you can do that without hurting them. So I think he underestimated, as did Clinton, the sensitivity of people to what they see as an effort to make them share the healthcare with poor people.
In other words it was just voter selfishness. Barney and the rest of the Dems NEVER come clean. They blame all of their failures on the customer. The reason people dislike Obamacare is that it’s a bad idea implemented inefficiently and with no small amount of corruption.
In today’s American Spectator I discuss the unsettling possibility that, in an effort to split the baby on ObamaCare, the Supreme Court will inadvertantly allow IPAB (the law’s health care rationing mechanism) to stand. That would not be good news for the elderly:
With the possible exception of the individual mandate, the most pernicious contrivance of ObamaCare is the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), the fifteen-member committee whose purpose is to ration health care to seniors by manipulating Medicare payment rates. Before the advent of ObamaCare, only Congress had the power to make changes to Medicare’s reimbursement scheme. Now, unless the Supreme Court strikes down the “reform� law in its entirety, that power will be transferred to the unaccountable political appointees of IPAB.
The members of this death panel, as it has been appropriately dubbed, will then be able to meddle with the fiscal machinery of Medicare without having to worry about the ire of the pesky electorate. IPAB is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to repeal.
This had to be a double facepalm moment for the White House. David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political advisor, was so rattled by tough questions from a real journalist on Fox News that he screwed up his lines and seemed to advocate dumping his boss:
The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle class and gives people a chance to get ahead and their kids a chance to get ahead and an economy that continues down the road we’re on.
As I have been saying for some time, Mitt Romney is the GOP candidate whom Obama has always wanted to run against.
First, having signed Romneycare into law, he has no credibility on health reform. Second, Obama can easily depict Romney as a rich Republican completely out of touch with ordinary Americans.
Finally the Obama campaign will use its shills in the “news” media to remind evangelical voters that he’s a Mormon and particularly to convince African-American voters that he’s a closet racist. Here’s exhibit A:
Through his long presidential campaign, Romney has managed to maneuver his way around one of the most difficult questions in the history of Mormonism: The church’s systematic discrimination against African-Americans, who were barred from the priesthood until 1978. But as the political landscape shifts in the coming weeks to pit the first Mormon nominee directly against the nation’s first black president, a new set of voices — black intellectuals and religious leaders, in particular — are beginning to demand that Romney address a subject that’s rarely far from the surface of modern American politics: race.
By the time the Obama campaign and their media toadies finish with him, Mitt Romney will look like a combination of Donald Berwick, Gordon Gekko, Jim Jones and Bull Connor.Â
Santorum could have beat Obama. Romney will get his ass kicked.Â
The following chart has been posted last by various pro-ObamaCare outlets to show that striking down the mandate would create chaos in the health insurance market and the medical delivery system.
The solution for that is not, however, for the Court to uphold the mandate, It is to kill the whole bill. Most of the problems illustrated in the chart would be caused by other provisions of ObamaCare.
It’s time for our progressives friends to face it: Even if ObamaCare were constitutional, it is a poorly-thought-out mess. It is a bad law passed by arrogant partisans by means of dubious parliamentary skulduggery.
The Supreme Court should put it out of its misery.
Since the President began braying about the Supreme Court and ObamaCare last week, more and more people are beginning to doubt his basic understanding of the Constitution. Ann Coulter is one of them. In this video Coulter, who is an attorney with considerable knowledge of constitutional law, says his comments suggest that we need to look at his law school transcripts:
On Monday, when the President began braying about ObamaCare and the possibility that the Supremes might strike down the individual mandate or even the entire “reform” law, he said something stupid:
I’m confident that the Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.
In fact, it wouldn’t be unprecedented or even extraordinary. The Court has been doing it for more than two centuries. In this clip, the White House press corps jumps on Obama’s Press Secretary for “clarification”:
Yesterday, the President more or less dared the Supreme Court to overturn ObamaCare or its key provision, the individual mandate:
I’m confident that the Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.
Such a ruling would not, of course, be unprecedented or particularly extraordinary. The Court has been doing it for more than 200 years. But Obama’s ill-timed and ignorant comments apparently pissed off a three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals:
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to ‘answer by Thursday whether the Obama Administration believes that the courts have the right to strike down a federal law.’
This order came in the midst of a lawsuit challenging a provision of ObamaCare that effectively makes it illegal for physicians to own hospitals. Having heard the President’s remarks, the judges now want to know if the Obama administration objects to the doctrine of judicial review.
Obama had better stop braying about this case in public. The Supreme Court is in a position a do him some serious damage. And they will not be amused by his Chi-town bluster.
In this news conference, the President claims to be confident that the Supremes will uphold ObamaCare. In fact, he uses the word “confident” at least half a dozen times in this one clip. Sounds like he’s trying a little too hard to convince us:
