The Torches and Pitchforks Come Out on Health Care
The liberal intelligentsia used to sneer at George W. Bush because he didn’t read newspapers. I’m starting to wonder if the same criticism should be applied to Barack Obama.
As Obama revs up for a barnstorming national road trip to convince us that health insurance companies are comprised exclusively of blackhearted sociopaths, a constant refrain from the president has been that Congress needs to act now because ”the American people want this.” This may have been true shortly after the election. The public, blind with fury at Wall Street, collectively turned to the government and asked for serious economic help. Support for statist health care was, unfortunately, very high.
No more. According to a recent Rasmussen Reports survey, 49 percent of respondents opposed congressional health care reform with just 47 percent supportive. 50 percent rejected the idea of a government-run health insurance company. And 78 percent indicated that Obamacare was likely to mean higher taxes for the middle class. Meanwhile, Obama’s approval rating continues to fluctuate between 48 percent and 51 percent, a plunge from just a month ago. Gallup and NBC News polls have showed similar results. Did Obama miss this entirely or does he not give a damn?
More stunning than the president’s nosediving numbers has been the groundswell of outrage at town hall meetings across the nation about Obamacare. The most recent (and vivid) episode happened in Philadelphia when a questioner asked HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter (Himself-Penn.) how the government was supposed to manage health care when it couldn’t even keep the cash for clunkers program running. The crowd heckled both as they tried to answer.
Later, when Specter grumbled that health care reform needed to be done “fast”, the entire town hall exploded in anger.
Specter wasn’t the first victim of populist outrage. Sen. Claire McCaskill (R-Mo.) faced a tough crowd last week when a soldier demanded an apology from her for supporting the grossly unconstitutional mess of health care reform.
This is not to say that every American is reaching for torches and pitchforks right now. Town hall attendees are often partisan and occasionally crazy, as Rep. Mike Castle (D-Del.) discovered last week when his meeting was invaded by lunatics screaming that Obama wasn’t an American citizen. But Democrats should take note: the public is slowly rising up against them. Since Rahm Emmanuel insists on texting everyone in Washington city limits on a daily basis to remind them that elections matter: so do policy debates. Democrats are losing the current one not because of insurance industry propaganda or dishonest Republicans. They’re being shellacked because the GOP’s most worn cliche has turned out to be true: Democrats are reckless taxers and spenders. The American people, with their wallets already light from the recession, could want nothing less.
