Winston Churchill once described Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” That could as well describe the schizophrenic Obama White House
The same Obama who campaigned that he would rise above partisan politics has become more polarizing in the eyes of some (including Gallup) than George Bush. The same Obama who signaled in his SOTU that he would pivot to focus on jobs and the economy has now re-pivoted to continue to push ObamaCare.
In the run-up to this week’s summit, polls showed the American people are opposed to the Senate version of the healthcare bill, opposed to using reconciliation to ram something through, and opposed to “big fix” solutions that produced the likes of Medicare and Medicaid in the salad days of the Great Society.
The summit found the approval rating of Congress hovering at 18% and Obama’s approval rating at 44% compared to a 55% disapproval rating. Approval for President Obama’s handling of health care is just 36%, according to the latest CBS News poll. Even the Obama girl, Amber Lee
Ettinger, who cooed her adoration for candidate Obama in 2008, recently announced that she’s turning away from him. “I give him a B-,” she said.
Ignoring the polls, town halls, and recent election results, Pelosi asserted at this week’s summit that the American people can’t wait any longer for Congress to pass healthcare reform. "Baby steps don't get you to the place where (the American) people need to go," Obama said. Reid is reconsidering the public option that his own senate caucus has rejected.
Are these people in contact with a parallel universe? Where are they getting these ideas?
"We don't do comprehensive well," Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander said at the health summit. "We've watched the comprehensive, economy-wide, cap and trade. We've watched the comprehensive immigration bill ... we've watched the comprehensive healthcare bill. And they fall of their own weight."
I didn’t have seven hours to waste watching a summit whose outcome was almost predetermined when Obama published his healthcare bill on the Internet, essentially driving a stake in the ground that this would be the starting point for compromise. Yet the little TV coverage I did watch, and the radio talking heads I listened to, and the news I’ve read since the summit showed it was little more that an adult version of “King of the Hill” that little boys play. Anyone proposing a material departure from the presidential version of the health bill was chastened by Obama as if he were a nattering nanny, not someone interested in other people’s ideas.
Whenever Obama talks about healthcare reform (or any kind of reform, for that matter) it becomes obvious that his goal isn’t expanded healthcare coverage, but rather expanded federal government control.
Obama claims his interests are expanding coverage and reducing costs. Yet, he opposes allowing people to buy insurance across state lines, even though it would break the state monopolies that insurance companies have within a state and bring down costs by opening their markets to all comers. He only wants them insured on his terms. He will determine the "fairness" of their coverage.
Even though tort reform would eliminate the expensive practice of defensive medicine, Obama is opposed to it.
Most recently Obama has proposed federal regulation of insurance premium hikes, in the wake of Anthem’s truly stupid idea to raise premiums in California almost 40%, which would only add another layer of control on top of the regulation of insurance companies by 50 states.
The impasse that congress and the White House now find themselves facing is not about a difference of ideas. It’s about a difference in the way of governing. And as ObamaCare circles the drain hole, the president seems willing to bet his party in one last round of “chicken” and ignore the warning of polls by using a procedure designed to pass budgetary bills, not policy bills.
In his closing remarks, Obama bordered on ominous.
"If we can't (produce a bipartisan bill), then we've got to make some honest decisions,'' the president said. With an implied threat to proceed with passage of a healthcare bill over the objections of Republicans, “there are going to be lots of arguments over procedures,” Obama said, because “we have honest disagreements about the vision for the country, and that's what elections are for.''
He's right. This is an issue that will be settled in November.
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