What's At Stake
Charles Krauthammer, cutting and concise (as per usual) in his new column:
An Obama second term means that the movement toward European-style social democracy continues, in part by legislation, in part by executive decree. The American experiment — the more individualistic, energetic, innovative, risk-taking model of democratic governance — continues to recede, yielding to the supervised life of the entitlement state.
If Obama loses, however, his presidency becomes a historical parenthesis, a passing interlude of overreaching hyper-liberalism, rejected by a center-right country that is 80 percent nonliberal.
One slight modification: it only becomes a parenthesis, it seems to me, if Obama is defeated and Obamacare is repealed. Getting rid of the president = good. Getting rid of the millstone he's put around the neck of a free people = even better.
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Comments:
May '10
Re: What's At Stake
But repeal will, in any case, end up being done in pieces, not in one grand kill. The Bill is a jerry-built hodge-podge, and it will take a bunch of smart staffers in a skunk works effort to figure out what changing or killing each piece does. Some things are obvious right away, others much less so.
You can also do other things that don't "kill", but render the bad irrelevant. That is easier, and provides protective cover for Dems to sign on.
Jan '11
Re: What's At Stake
Can you call four years a teaching "moment?"
Sep '12
Re: What's At Stake
If by "even better" you mean "moral imperative."
May '10
Re: What's At Stake
We need President Romney AND a Republican senate.
Oct '10
Re: What's At Stake
@Duane Oyen
You could not be more wrong. To enter this tangled morass of legislative doublespeak is to enter a never ending labyrinth of duplicitous fraud. A 100% repeal of the bill is the only solution. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111–148) was designed by Pelosi and Co. as the maze intended for the mind of Duane Oyen and others who appear content to exhaust their lives knitting silk purses to replace sows ears.
Did you learn nothing from JRR Tolkein?
Re: What's At Stake
One way that a Romney administration could really dent Obamacare (the ACA) would be to actually follow the law.
The ACA requires states to organize insurance marketplaces (called "exchanges"), but if they refuse, it requires the federal government to organize an exchange for them. There's a provision in the ACA which says that people who buy insurance through a federally organized exchange are ineligible for federal subsidies -- see here or here. Without these subsidies, the whole scheme falls apart since there are few low and middle income families who can afford to pay $12,000+ per year to buy the overly generous plans required by the ACA.
The Obama administration has ignored this provision of the ACA and plans to provide subsidies whether an exchange is federally organized or not. There's no reason for a Romney administration to follow suit, and it would not require an act of Congress to accomplish.
** edited to correct an embarrassing grammatical error
Edited on November 2, 2012 at 9:38pmJul '12
Re: What's At Stake
The Right better be ready to fight Pres. Romney from November 7th onward. We cannot under any circumstances let him get away with the nonsense like NLCB, Medicare Part D, DHS, Wiretapping, etc...before all of a sudden waking up half-way through his presidency with skyrocketing debt and more of the same GOP Crony Capitalist largesse.
We better be ready to carry a big stick and speak loudly.
Mar '11
Re: What's At Stake
I disagree with one main point of Krauthammer's argument: I don't think we'll see much active advancement toward social democracy in Obama's second term. He will never again have the legislative majorities to push through anything meaningful, and a hostile Republican Congress will start pushing back more powerfully against change by executive order.
Four more years of Obama will mean four years of nothing happening while the status quo becomes ever more entrenched. That alone is more than enough reason to vote him out without any apocalyptic scenarios.
Mar '11
Re: What's At Stake
raycon: @Duane Oyen
You could not be more wrong. To enter this tangled morass of legislative doublespeak is to enter a never ending labyrinth of duplicitous fraud. A 100% repeal of the bill is the only solution. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111–148) was designed by Pelosi and Co. as the maze intended for the mind of Duane Oyen and others who appear content to exhaust their lives knitting silk purses to replace sows ears.
I tend to agree with Duane. The PPACA was certainly designed to be a Kafkaesque castle from which escape is nearly impossible, but you also have to go to battle with the electorate you have.
Public opinion on healthcare is incredibly finicky, and many people seem to be schizophrenic about what the want the system to look like. Trying to repeal the whole thing - without a replacement in hand that preserves many of the benefits voters like - might just doom the entire repeal effort to failure.
Re: What's At Stake
Agree with you on this point, Duane. How we got about sorting through the wreckage is a tactical question. But the goal of removing it is an imperative.
My bigger point is that our side is a bit too flip sometimes in thinking that an Obama loss would render his presidency inconsequential. Obamacare is one of the most sweeping reorderings of American life in decades. If your goal is to push back against "the supervised life of the entitlement state," you have to go after the program itself, not just its author.
May '10
Re: What's At Stake
raycon: @Duane Oyen
You could not be more wrong. To enter this tangled morass of legislative doublespeak is to enter a never ending labyrinth of duplicitous fraud. A 100% repeal of the bill is the only solution. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111–148) was designed by Pelosi and Co. as the maze intended for the mind of Duane Oyen and others who appear content to exhaust their lives knitting silk purses to replace sows ears.
Did you learn nothing from JRR Tolkein? · 27 minutes ago
Raycon, I agree with your description of the law. Now explain to me how you plan to get 60 votes for cloture to kill the non-reconciliation pieces of the bill?
Based on the way the Senate races have gone, we'll be lucky to have 50 plus VP to chop the reconciliation pieces- and the impact of just changing that could have some nasty surprises, which is why I discussed the need for a skunk works to check and re-check each piece.
As Norm Coleman mused regarding process, to the outrage of a lot of conservatives, wishing we could just zap it doesn't mean that's possible.
Jun '10
Re: What's At Stake
There are two fonts for great conservative thought:
Calm mode: Charles Krauthammer
Rant mode: Mark Steyn
Both work just fine for me.
May '10
Re: What's At Stake
Nonsense. Obama is a modernization of FDR, and FDR was no parenthesis.
You can't fight an enemy you can't see. If conservatives refuse to acknowledge that an electorally and culturally significant portion of American citizens support the unConstitutional ideology and methods of this administration, conservatives will lose.
Aug '11
Re: What's At Stake
I hope you are right, Troy. However, if we gain the reigns of Congress we need to do a little more to set a few more proper traps so the bear of socialism does not creep back into the shining city on the hill. We need major tax reform and simplification. We need a balanced budget amendment that covers spending and takes into current consideration the funding of the present value of future entitlement promises - ERISA type funding mechanisms for Medicare, SSI and any similar program. We need to rethink banking and finance generally, get the government out of lending, put the wall back up separating corporate finance and speculative investment activities from guaranteed deposit financed banking activities. We need to re-open the public markets and recognize Sarbanes-Oxley as the Big Four enrichment act that it is. We need to refocus the fed on inflation and reign in their soft dollar policy, even if this means relying on commodities related indices to dictate money supply changes. The list goes on and on. Welfare re-reform, privatization of government insurance programs in banking, pensions, flood zones, etc. Privatize Fanny, Freddy and student loans. Privatize Amtrak. I'm out of...
Oct '10
Re: What's At Stake
Aaron Miller
Nonsense. Obama is a modernization of FDR, and FDR was no parenthesis.
You can't fight an enemy you can't see. If conservatives refuse to acknowledge that an electorally and culturally significant portion of American citizens support the unConstitutional ideology and methods of this administration, conservatives will lose. · 1 hour ago
There is a lot to do once Romney is installed, but it will be a giant first step on the journey and I am going to stop after that first step and whoop it up.