The President’s recent “mea culpa” with regards to the roll out of the Democrats Affordable Care Act is an attempt to accomplish a few things. In the short term it takes a little of the heat off some of the other Democrat legislators who, unlike the President, are running for reelection in 2014. Like a group of teenagers who get drunk and wreck the family car, they are only too glad to allow the President to take the blame because he was driving. Any one of them could have taken the keys.
Beyond this, the altering of the law to more closely resemble what the President promised it would be here at the eleventh hour, is an attempt to introduce chaos to a situation where relative order was devastating to the President’s popularity, and hence his power. It’s the equivalent to shutting off the lights when you’re losing a fight… it may not help, but it couldn’t hurt, and at least people won’t be able to just sit back and watch you being pummeled.
The shifting of the decision for whose plans will ultimately be cancelled to the state authorities, and more importantly, the insurance companies, represents the initiation of a pivot for the President. The plan was always about moving us closer to the politically unviable “single payer” government funded health system. It was likely intended to eventually fail, though not in this grand and humiliating way. Rather, as time went on the partnership between private enterprise, i.e. the insurance companies, and the government bureaucracy would have proven too lumbering, clunky and slow. The insurance companies would have been painted as the problem, and, whether by fiat or a more gradual process, been pushed out the door leaving the government to save the day. There was no back-up plan, and despite the unlikely success of the gambit at this point, it is the only play the President has. Look for him to “fix” the problem government has created by adding yet more government to the equation.
President Obama isn’t the only President thinking three moves ahead. Bill Clinton’s admonition to the President to essentially do exactly what he did to fix his broken promise, has all the hallmarks of the workings of a political mind. The Clinton brand in its latest iteration (Hillary) needs to be inoculated from Obama’s damaging of the Democrat’s glow. As the matriarch of government run healthcare, Hillary cannot be totally separated from this toxic issue, but she can be elevated above the most damaging aspects of the roll-out, the dishonesty and the ineptitude. I don’t believe that Bill Clinton is a puppet master when it comes to Obama’s policy decisions; rather I believe he has sufficient connections to know what was coming down the pike from the White House. He saw his opportunity to help position himself (and by extension, Hillary) above the fray, by advising the President to do what he knew he was about to do.
IMHO: No doubt our healthcare system had some issues, but using the President’s analogy of a “glitchy” iPhone, the Affordable Care Act is like your know-it-all friend insisting he can fix your IPhone with a sledge hammer. It may not have been right before, but now it is entirely broken. The mea culpa and the attempt to temporarily put things back the way they were would only work if we had a time machine. That is why you ought not be hasty with a sledge hammer. That is exactly why intricate and dynamic portions of our economy ought not be trusted to the blunt force of the Federal government. This is broken in a big way, and there will be no easy fix. Some of us will suffer because we have permitted this to happen. Yes, elections do have consequences. Supreme Court decisions have consequences. Misguided opposition strategies have consequences.
The demise of Obamacare will probably more or less take care of itself. Victories are rare in the Republican camp, so the GOP seems more interested in continuing this battle than looking ahead to the next. As the “Government Shutdown” Republican disaster proved, a crisis is only politically pertinent until the next crisis comes along. There is little doubt that this fiasco, and the less than stellar way that the President has handled it, has probably turned him into a lame duck less than one year into his second term. However, that doesn’t mean that Obamacare will be a deciding factor in elections to come. Barack Obama is less of a threat than the ideology he represents. He is not up for reelection, but that ideology probably is. Republicans need to begin thinking three moves ahead as well.
The immediate problem is the devastation of our healthcare system. It is not enough going forward to giggle and say “I told you so”… we need solutions, and we need to see Republicans foregoing gloating and rolling up their sleeves to find them. There are only two forces powerful enough to address the damage done, government and the free market. Conservatives need to start putting forward free market solutions to fix what has been broken. The alternative is socialism. There will likely be an uneasy limbo for a time, but the utter failure of the ACA should begin to wake up citizens to the dangers of progressive policy, and politicians generally follow more than lead.
Then there are the coming elections. It is now unfortunate that the law has been labelled as Obamacare, since it was never exclusively his. Indeed, the plan that eventually became law on a strictly partisan vote, more closely resembles the one Hillary was pushing in the primaries than what Obama advocated. This needs to be hung on the necks of these candidates today, not in a year or three… voter memories are short and you attack when you have the high ground… you don’t wait for elections. These candidates are already running, and there is no reason to wait.
Finally, there is the future. For years Americans have been ignoring the watchmen’s alarm against progressive policy, and the shredding of the Constitution and the vision of our forefathers. State sovereignty, and united diversity have been eschewed in favor of central planning and conformity to Federal uniformity. It is a perfect time to remind our neighbors of the philosophy of Freedom that once made this country the greatest on the planet. It’s a good day for a revolution.
uh-huh and right on!!!