Speaking at a children’s hospital, the president said, “Now, there are some in this town who are content to perpetuate the status quo, are in fact fighting reform on behalf of powerful special interests. There are others who recognize the problem, but believe — or perhaps, hope — that we can put off the hard work of insurance reform for another day, another year, another decade.
“Just the other day,” the president continued, “one Republican senator said — and I’m quoting him now — ‘If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.’ Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses, and breaking America’s economy.”
This isn’t about Obama? Laughable. And this isn’t about politics? He says that with a straight face even as he attacks political opponents on the issue. And Democratic Senator Ben Cardin picked up the rhetoric, via Ace:
“What we’re seeing from the Republican response is that they’ll say anything to President Obama suggests,” Cardin said in a conference call organized by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) this afternoon.
Cardin took aim at Steele’s claims made in a speech before the National Press Club this morning, where the RNC head claimed that President Obama and congressional Democrats are “experimenting” with the economy and the healthcare system.
“The only option that should not be on the table is the status quo, and that looks like what the Republicans are suggesting,” Cardin said, after accusing Steele of “politicizing” the debate over healthcare.
It’s laborious to comprehend just how transparently disingenuous all of this rhetoric from Obama and his allies really can be. Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate. They hold enough votes in the House of Representatives to ram through legislation that would outlaw the Republican Party if they wanted to do so. They have control of the White House and an incumbent president who is pushing for the legislation stronger than anyone. And yet they’re blaming Republicans with almost no power in Washington for being obstructionists? They’re wasting time attacking people they can ignore and yet still pass the socialized healthcare without? Pathetic.
The truth is that the failure of Barack Obama and his liberal allies to ram ObamaCare through has nothing to do with Republican obstructionism. The right has the least amount of power that it’s held in decades. It has no ability to block even minor legislation, much less the flagship of the entire Obama presidency.
It’s moderate and conservative Democrats worried about the massive costs and government-takeover that comes with ObamaCare that are holding the plan up. They don’t feel like returning to their districts and states with this albatross dangling from their necks. They’re attempting to figure out how to explain to their moderate or even conservative voters from all sides of the aisle how we’re going to afford this program when the nation is already broke. On top of that, voters are rapidly turning against the flagship public option and are sick of seeing the still-growing $1 trillion annual deficit.
But Barack Obama and liberal allies can’t lay blame on their fellow Democrats or the American people. It would be tantamount to political suicide. So instead they’ll place the blame squarely on a group of individuals with no power to hold-up the legislation or even frame the debate. Like I said, it’s a transparently disingenuous move that hopefully the American people will quickly see right through.
by Stephan Tawney on Mon, Jul 20, 2009