September 23, 2010

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By Dave Andrusko

Today is the six-month anniversary of the passage of ObamaCare. With Democrats running away from ObamaCare like crazy, POLITICO provided nothing short of a public service yesterday by running a story written by Carrie Budoff Brown. Headlined "Dems guess wrong on health care," the brunt of the story is to contrast the assurances given by various Democratic authority figures (including pro-abortion former President Bill Clinton) with today's I-never-even-HEARD-of ObamaCare position adopted by so many endangered Democrats.

It's not second-guessing when you saw it coming--and said so. A lot of people anticipated the tidal wave of opposition, including Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Douglas Schoen. In a March 12 Washington Post op-ed (that Brown alludes to), they warned that muscling through a hugely unpopular measure risked a furious voter backlash.

Brown helpfully cobbled together a series of don't worry, be happy statements. By and large, they were either that "The minute the president signs the health care reform bill, approval will go up, because Americans are inherently optimistic" (Clinton); "tangible benefits" will "trump the fear-mongering rhetoric opponents are stoking today" (Obama pollster Joel Benenson); or nobody will care if Reid and Pelosi play the hardest of hardball because "the public will judge the Democrats on the basis of the results, not the inside-baseball process" (political scientists Norm Ornstein and Ted Mann).

But Caddell (President Carter's pollster) and Schoen (one of pollsters Clinton used) understood exactly why ObamaCare would be electoral poison.

• It was/is Big Government at its worse at a time when the public is in full-scale rebellion. (They cite a February 2010 CNN poll that found 56% of those surveyed believed "that the government has become so powerful it constitutes an immediate threat to the freedom and rights of citizens");

• a solid majority of the public opposed it--and with far greater intensity than supporters;

• and, indeed, people DID care about how the congressional Democratic leadership forced its will. "Since the spectacle of Christmas dealmaking to ensure passage of the Senate bill, the issue, in voters' minds, has become less about health care than about the government and a political majority that will neither hear nor heed the will of the people," Caddell and Schoen wrote on March 12.

And this doesn't even get to the part of the iceberg below the surface. From very early on the public understood that under ObamaCare the cost of medical care would explode and that rationing was inevitable. What many didn't know--but we did--is that ObamaCare is honeycombed with provisions to line the pockets of the Abortion Industry, guaranteeing more dead babies.

In Parts One and Two today, we talk about the Republican House Leadership's "Pledge to America." From our perspective, it is hugely reassuring and encouraging that this document fully understands that ObamaCare must be repealed and replaced.

BTW: if you want to see pro-abortion President Obama at his most self-indulgent, you should read his comments bashing critics of ObamaCare and predicting sunny days ahead for "health care reform," go to www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-health-insurance-reform-portland-maine.

Please send your comments on Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha.

Part One
Part Two