Mark Steyn is always right, whether he’s writing about Andrew Lloyd Webber or, in this case, the suicide-bomber-in-chief, Barack Obama, who doesn’t much care how many Democrats get sent to the electoral Elysian Fields — or even whether he gets a second term — as long as he can blow up the capitalist system from within. Excuse me — effect “fundamental change.” And what better way to get Hussein’s camel’s nose under your hospital gown than by taking over the American health-care system, all under the guise of “reform?”
Well, as Paddy Bauler once famously said, “Chicago ain’t ready for reform,” but the avatar of the Chicago Machine and the spiritual heir of Hinky-Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin certainly thinks America is ready for reform.
Why is he doing this? Why let “health” “care” “reform” stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how many stakes you pound through his chest?
Because it’s worth it. Big time. I’ve been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible.Naturally, the in-the-tank Washington press corps doesn’t get it; it’s too busy charting the minutiae of the horse-race and the nose-count. But even a heartland rube knows that when an amoral, sociopathic, malignant narcissist — in other words, a typical graduate of the Punahou School, Columbia College, and Harvard Law — tells you he’s doing something for your own good, it’s time consider alternative motives.
Republicans seem to have difficulty grasping this basic dynamic. Less than three months ago, they were stunned at the way the Democrats managed to get 60 senators to vote for the health bill. Then Scott Brown took them back down to 59, and Republicans were again stunned to find the Dems talking about ramming this thing into law through the parliamentary device of “reconciliation.” And, when polls showed an ever larger number of Americans ever more opposed to Obamacare (by margins approaching three-to-one), Republicans were further stunned to discover that, in order to advance “reconciliation,” Democrat reconsiglieres had apparently been offering (illegally) various cosy Big Government sinecures to swing-state congressmen in order to induce them to climb into the cockpit for the kamikaze raid to push the bill through. The Democrats understand that politics is not just about Tuesday evenings every other November, but about everything else, too.
Read the whole thing. And, while you’re at it, read this New York Times puff piece about Obama’s brain, David Axelrod, the former Chicago Tribune reporter who has made a handsome living working both sides of the street and already seems to be eyeballing the exits, ready to bolt as soon as the Commander-in-Chief announces, “Mission Accomplished.”
Your thoughts welcome here.
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