Despite polls showing widespread opposition to Obamacare, the Democrats insist on enacting this legislation — in the name of the working class.
Democrat/Socialist Party leaders, in their own minds, embody the will of the people.
According to the latest Gallup poll, 52% of voters oppose the President's intention to bypass the 60-vote super-majority traditionally employed in the Senate for passage of major measures, such as Obamacare.
Nonetheless, when Senator Lamar Alexander requested that President Obama respect the will of the majority, the president dismissed the request. "You know, this issue of reconciliation has been brought up. Again I think the American people aren't always all that interested in procedures inside the Senate. I do think they want a vote on how we're going to move this forward," he said.
Attempting to cram socialistic health care down our throats calls to mind the Soviet Communist Party elite claiming that, as the dictatorship of the proletariat, they were compelled to force compliance with their measures. In that vein, the President has said that once the cram-down has been effected, people will discover that they really love Big Brother's medicine.
When you own both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, have bullet-proof majorities in both legislative houses, and successfully hide from scrutiny all opposing viewpoints and still cannot get this done well; there comes a time when you have to admit that the problem with this issue is staring at you from the mirror.
The quandary with the progressive left in this country is its very make-up. They are a loosely interconnected combination of ‘special victim’s’ groups. Each group exhibits absolutely no loyalty to anything other than their particular cause. In some cases these groups are diametrically opposed to each other.
Just after the election, I penned a response to an essay where I described this very situation and said that I was going to just sit back and enjoy the show as the democratic majorities tore themselves to pieces. This is exactly what has happened. The Progressive Democrats aren’t in this position now because of the American people, or Republicans. The Progressive Democrats are in this position because of who they are.
Democrats make this argument based on the sweep of both houses of Congress and the white house that voters gave them starting in November of 2006. It’s hard to say they aren’t justified in this line of reasoning – it isn’t as if Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama were in any way, shape or form ambiguous about the agenda that they had for the country, and yet they were voted in by very comfortable margins. It’s just too bad people couldn’t muster this sudden surge of pseudo-libertarianism BEFORE they elected a collectivist triumvirate to rule over both branches of elected government. You can’t really blame a thief for stealing your things when he showed up at your door wearing a ski mask and toting a gun and you invited him in and told him to make himself at home.
Patrick,
I tend to disagree with your analysis. Beginning before the 2006 election cycle, the DNC looked at congressional districts that were teetering on the very edge of electoral supremacy.
Allow me to offer as evidence, Democratic Congressional Representative Eric Massa of New York. Mr. Massa. The district’s voting pattern index (PVI) is a Republican +5 seat. The Democratic challenger won his race against the incumbent 51% to 49% in 2008.
Participating in a taped interview during the annual Netroots Nation gathering in Pittsburgh in August of 2009 Mr. Massa was questioned about health care and was quoted as saying; “I will vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful. I will vote against their opinion if I actually believe it will help them.” I don’t think that I could be called unreasonable if I said that this Congressional Representative believes that it is his obligation to vote against the wishes of his constituents when he believes stakes to be high enough.
Your assertion; “…it isn’t as if Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama were in any way, shape or form ambiguous about the agenda that they had for the country…” is sophistry. The primary occupation of all progressives is obfuscation, diversion, and manipulation. The progressive history is replete with such slight of hand. One of the central dogmas of the Church of Secular Progressivism is that all policy must be couched within euphemism. Strict adherence to this precept is required in order to placate the average American. The idea is to make unpalatable policy seem innocuous; to get the average person to accept the change as so minor as to not constitute anything to be concerned over. After all; what’s in a word, how can one word possibly alter the debate over core principles?
That persons like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid ascribe to such principles cannot be disputed. The difference was, that beginning in 2006, this and other principles were ‘institutionalized’ by the DNC. This was taken to another level during the elections of 2006 and 2008. The DNC cherry picked districts with a PVI rating of + – 5 percentage points: Betting that if they could win enough of those districts by representing democratic challengers as fiscally conservative, moderate, deliberative legislators that would ‘change’ Washington while painting the opposition as lock step supporters of an unpopular administration. The bet was that once these candidates became legislators, they would be beholden to the DNC and robotically follow the lead of the Speaker.
Barack Obama wasn’t the first progressive candidate to run on ‘change’, only the latest.
I suppose that was true at a local level, but anyone who went and pulled the lever for a democrat in their district did so knowing full well (or at least should have) what the agenda of the national party was – it couldn’t have been made more clear by every action that Pelosi and Reid took since 2006 and in the constantly-looped speeches Obama delivered to SEIU and ACORN vowing solidarity with the most radical elements in American politics. Nobody who voted in an absolute Democrat lock on government can claim ignorance if they had access to television, print media, or the internet, and basic literacy.
The sad fact is that the majority of Americans are not principled conservatives. They lean right of center, but they’re fickle, and they have no fundamental philosophical objection to an overarching government – they just don’t want to pay for it, and they get upset when, as Barry Goldwater warned, the government that they made big enough to give them everything they want also turns out to be big enough to take everything they have. And the rest of us are along for the ride. The dictatorship of the proletariat that the author discusses is not a figment of the imagination of over-reaching elected leaders who misunderstood their mandate. It’s the reality of the government that a fickle and ill-informed electorate put into office. Being fickle, the same electorate will eventually reverse themselves, but it will be for the same reason. The electorate may not have been socialist when it elected a Democrat super-majority, but it liked the sound of socialist policies. And it will be no more libertarian when it turns around and elects a Republican majority.
Patrick,
Yes, but all politics IS local. But; I can certainly concur with your statement that most Americans are not principled conservatives. Unlike most that post to this site, they’ve not taken the time to formulate a complete political philosophy or have the conviction to implement it.
I believe there is also a component of immediate gratification or justification involved here. Imagine republicans in 2006 before the surge; either disillusioned over the Iraq war, or upset with our compassionate conservative in Washington spending money the way he was, or both. A significant percentage either stayed home or pulled the lever for ‘change’ and went back home feeling their job was done. Same in 2008.
What the overwhelming majority of voters forget is that the job doesn’t end with the vote, it begins with the vote. You must be involved enough to hold those you elect accountable. Vigilance indeed is the price for liberty. For a long time my major reason for voting was my right to bitch. My Dad used to always say “If you don’t vote, you can’t bitch.” I always made sure I voted because I loved to complain.
My attitude changed when I turned forty. I noticed that my personal financial security seemed somehow to be tied to the president. My life sucked under Carter, got better under Reagan, and began to suck again under Clinton. I was never out of work, but it sure seemed harder to get ahead under those liberal administrations. I’ve been careful ever since to not only vote conservative in national races but as far down-ticket as possible as well.
This has led to more involvement in local politics; to the point where I’ve finally decided to actually run for office myself in 2010. If you can’t fix it from the inside of the party through the vote, then you have to be willing to put it on the line for your beliefs.
It is up to those committed conservatives to re-make their local elections. Find out where the candidate goes to church, where he shops, what he believes in. Then hold him to those standards when he achieves office. Confront him when he does wrong. Go to his house, his church, his office and complain. We’ve got to take this back, and the best way to do it is to take a page out of the liberal’s book. Squeeky wheels get grease ya’ know