By Michelle Malkin
The Oba-Kabuki health care show at Blair House kicked off with a big lie on Thursday morning -- and it all went downhill from there. The taxpayer-funded infomercial backfired by exposing the presidents thin skin the Democrats naked disingenuousness and the ruling majoritys allergies to political and policy realities.
Responding to Sen. Lamar Alexanders opening call for Democrats to renounce parliamentary tactics designed to limit debate circumvent filibusters and lower the threshold for passage of health care reform to a simple 51-vote majority Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sputtered indignantly: No ones talking about reconciliation!
Everybody and their mother has been invoking the R word on Capitol Hill starting with Reid.
In a letter on Feb. 16 four Democratic senators pushed Reid to adopt the procedure normally reserved for budget matters. A few days later White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs discussed the option. Then Reid himself talked up reconciliation on a Nevada public affairs show as an option to ram the government health care takeover through in the next 60 days.
According to The Hill Reid said that congressional Democrats would likely opt for a procedural tactic in the Senate allowing the upper chamber to make final changes to its health care bill with only a simple majority of senators instead of the 60 it takes to normally end a filibuster.
A few days after that Reid snapped that Republicans should stop crying about the abrogation of Senate minority rights since the GOP had used the
reconciliation process in the past.
So the cleanest most ethical holier-than-thou Congress ever is now defending the unprecedented adoption of ram-down rules for a radical multitrillion-dollar program to usurp one-seventh of the economy on the grounds of two wrongs make it right? Hope and change baby.
For his part President Obama responded with one part pique and two parts diffidence. After the summit lunch break Republicans pushed the reconciliation issue again in the face of the Democrats refusal to disavow the short-circuiting of the deliberative process.
The American people an annoyed Obama asserted are not all that interested in procedures inside the Senate.
Oh really?
A new
USA Today/Gallup poll reports that 52 of Americans oppose using the procedural maneuver to pass the health care bill in the Senate.
The survey also showed that Americans oppose Demcare-style health care reform by 49 to 42 -- with those strongly opposed outnumbering those strongly in favor by 23 to 11.
Obamas best and brightest team of Chicago strategists new-media gurus and communications specialists still hasnt figured it out: Voters are as fed up with the corrupt process in Washington as they are with the White Houses overreaching policies.
Its both stupid.
When he wasnt cutting off Republicans who stuck to budget specifics and cited legislative page numbers and language instead of treacly sob-story anecdotes involving dentures and gallstones Obama was filibustering the talk-a-thon away
by invoking his daughters rambling on about auto insurance and sniping at former GOP presidential rival John McCain.
Were not campaigning anymore lectured the perpetual campaigner-in-chief.
After ostentatiously disputing the GOPs claims that health care premiums would rise under his plan Obama walked it back. Confronted with more GOP pushback on the failure of Demcare to control costs Obama told GOP Rep. Paul Ryan that hed rather not get bogged down in numbers.
Not numbers that he couldnt cook on the spot without staff consultation anyway.
Obama and the Democrats labored mightily to create the illusion of almost-there bipartisanship by repeatedly telling disagreeing Republicans that we dont disagree and theres not a lot of difference between us. But the dogs werent riding the ponies in this show.
This was a set-up from the start.
The were so close mantra is the rhetorical wedge the White House will use to blame Republicans for fatal obstructionism while whitewashing festering opposition from both pro-life Democrats who oppose the government funding of abortion services still in the plan and left-wing progressives in the House who are clinging to a full unadulterated public option.
While Republicans came off well the six-hour blowhard-fest was a monumental waste of time. Obamacare Theater tied up GOP energy and resources as the White House readies its Plan B (expanding government health care coverage just at a slower pace) and Democratic leaders prep their reconciliation ram-down for early next week.
This Washington box-office bomb is a prelude to much bigger legislative horrors still to come. Dont you love farce?
Michelle Malkin makes news & waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild.
