It’s starting to crack. The monolithic support for ramming through socialized medicine with the nuke option is giving cold feet to none other than Howard “Scream” Dean.
Passing the healthcare proposals before Congress will “hang out to dry” every Democratic incumbent running for reelection this fall, Howard Dean said Thursday.
Dean, a physician by training who’s a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), said that Democrats in Congress — and President Barack Obama — would do themselves more harm than good by passing the current healthcare bill.
“The plan, as it comes from the Senate, hangs out every Democrat who’s running for office to dry — including the president, in 2012, because it makes him defend a plan that isn’t in effect essentially yet,” Dean said during an appearance on the liberal Bill Press Radio Show.
Ya think, Howard? So what’s up with Olosi? Are they such political nincompoops that they don’t even have the political horse sense that Howard “Scream” Dean seems to have?
I think the whole thing is over for now anyway. The reconciliation process (“nuke option”) requires that the house pass the exact bill passed in the senate. It looks like that’s not going to happen, because there are a dozen donkeys who voted for the original bill, but won’t vote for the senate version over the publicly funded abortion provisions.
So I guess it’s all over but the screaming. Take it away Howard…
Addition by Speranza:
At the Washington Examiner yesterday an Editorial compared Obama’s obsession with trying to ram Obamacare down our throats despite the public’s opposition to it, to Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. “a horrendous, bloody carnage that could have been avoided, had not their commander, Gen. Robert E. Lee, been so determined to do it his way — a massed frontal assault against a nearly impregnable position.”
hat tip to Powerline
Just about everyone who was on that battlefield July 3, 1863 knew that 12,000 men were going to be sent to their doom due to the stubbornness of their commander, the same as just about everyone in this country knows that Obamacare will lead to a disaster as well. At least Lee was man enough to say after the disaster “It is all my fault” – words that are alien to Obama. Dr. K. yesterday said that he thinks 2010 might not be the complete disaster for the Dems as 2006 was for the GOP because 1. Obama is still popular and, 2. Americans felt lied to about the war. I disagree. 1. Obama might be personally popular (primarily because too many naive people invested so much in him) but his policies are not, 2. in addition to the wildly unpopular Obamacare, we still have massive unemployment to worry about, and 3. voters are waking up to the dangers of having one party rule when the POTUS is an ideologue. I expect a Republican tidal wave in November.
by Charles Krauthammer
So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts’ devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obamacare lives.
After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health care reform.
The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House “summit” with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans’ way.
Show is the operative noun. Among the few Republican suggestions President Obama pretended to incorporate was tort reform. What did he suggest to address the plague of defensive medicine that a Massachusetts Medical Society study showed leads to about 25 percent of doctor referrals, tests and procedures being done for no medical reason? A few ridiculously insignificant demonstration projects amounting to one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the cost of Obama’s health care bill.
[…]
Obama has chosen differently, however. The time for debate is over, declared the nation’s seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington’s wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of “budget reconciliation.” The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.
Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.
Read the rest here: Why the Health Care Bill is a Failure
Tags: Charles Krauthammer, Howard Dean, snork, socialized medicine, Speranza
