Thursday, June 26, 2014

Progressives Made Their Beds; It’s Time They Lay In It

Derek Hunter from Town Hall:

Republicans must resist the urge to help with these “fixes.”
We just spent a month being lectured by arrogant know-it-alls about how Obamacare is “settled law.” So keep it settled. 
Obamacare is failing already, and it will continue to fail in more spectacular ways as we move forward, let it. 
Democrat wrote the bill, Democrats voted for the bill, a Democrat president signed it into law. It’s theirs. Make them live with it. As is.Do not change one comma, one letter. It’s settled law! This is what they wanted, this is what people voted for. If the full failure of Obamacare isn’t allowed to happen, if “fixes” are passed, it will live on in a money-sucking spiral of destruction that will lead to a complete and total government takeover of health care in this country – which is their goal.
It’s going to be painful, but it’s also going to be quick. And the pain will be nothing compared to the damage to the economy and our future if this Frankenstein’s monster is helped to limp into permanency. 
Meanwhile, this is also a chance for conservative groups to flex their muscles (and ample money) in a non-circular firing squad way. I have to address them directly now.
Set up a website as a clearinghouse for Obamacare failure stories. 
I know you don’t play nice with each other, but get over it. One website, not competing websites – and the focus has to be spreading these collected stories to the media, both national and local. I know you love adding to your email lists, but this can’t be about that. This has to be about spreading the truth the media will do its damnedest to ignore. 
Gather stories from any source possible, including user-submitted. Verify them and record the actual people going through them on video in 30- and 60-second clips. Then blast them out daily to every local media outlet in their area. And post new ones on the site daily. Go around the media like President Reagan used to. Overwhelm them into covering the truth. 
It’s going to take money, but this can’t be a fundraiser for you. Asking people for money is understandable in normal circumstances, but this is not a normal circumstance. Collect stories, film them and get them out there – that is the only purpose here. If you want to win, that is. If you’d rather be the voice of the conservative movement or the Tea Party group, then that’s your priority – not making the country a better place – and I can’t help you.
Republicans have to be united. Conservatives have to be united. If done right, this effort will have no spokesman on TV. It will be a conduit for getting real people with real Obamacare horror stories in front of any camera, at any time, anywhere in the country. It will be a major undertaking, a massive database and possibly the most important thing any or all of you can do over the next year. 
Progressives are unified and indignant. They are indifferent to the cost to both the country and individual, and the pain to the individual is, to them, irrelevant. This is about the concept. 
To protect their agenda, they will highlight any success story, no matter how dubious. Conservatives must beat them at their own game. They trot out personal stories constantly; we must do the same. If the president gives a speech touting Obamacare in Fresno, Calif., every reporter within 100 miles should be served up a menu of people suffering under it before Air Force One touches the ground. 
This is a winnable fight. It’s our fight to win. But if there’s one thing Republicans and conservatives excel at, it’s snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. 
Obamacare is a disaster, not just in code on a website, but in concept and construction. It survives if we allow it to survive. No more delays, no more defunds, and no more changes. Every unconstitutional change the president makes must be immediately met with a court challenge, even if it’s good. It’s his law. It’s his “medicine.” Make him take it.

I have a lot of sympathy for this approach. Americans voted for it by voting in the crooks and fools who enacted it.

Perhaps the Republican strategy should be to shove it down everyone's throats, and play it hard to Republican advantage. Make ordinary Americans understand what they did when they pulled those "D" levers in the voting booth.

Perhaps it would backfire. I suspect that Obamacare is a mess on purpose-- I think Obama's strategy is to wreck the medical system, so they can get single payer from the wreckage. A Cloward-Piven strategy, applied to our health.

But we can play the game too. Let it be wrecked, and make damn sure the American people know who did it, and lead the charge to drive them out of our government.  

3 comments:

  1. The linked article is from October 20, 2013. Eight months ago. What's happened since then?

    Pretty up to date material for a blog that's been dead for 4 days.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 29, 2014 at 8:45 AM

    One of the more amusing things I've seen is Preezy o' th' Skeezy's slapping himself on the back about a WHOLE 7 MILYUN PEOPLE (a number now heavily discounted) signed up for Jeebuscare. Wow! Feel the love! What a product!

    But that's nothing, really. Not long after, ONE HUNNERT MILYUN PEOPLE SENT MONEY TO THE IRS!!! Now that's super-love!!!

    You really do have to laugh at people who believe that complying with a Federal law to buy product sold by a Federal monopoly constitutes a success story. I don't think Steve Jobs would be impressed.

    But that's only the beginning... Since the linked article was written, several state exchanges - including Massachusetts! - have imploded. In fact, criminal indictments are being sought in Oregon.

    And, of course, major parts of the backend software still do not work (as I predicted they would not in this forum months ago). In reality, most of the real work is being done by individuals in the employ of private insurance companies. Imagine if the Amazon website allowed you to place an order for bottled water, confirmed it, and then simply sent an e-mail to Target or Wal-Mart to fulfill and track your order.

    But, of course, that would not be as bad as it seems because Target and Wal-Mart would be limited by law to selling three kinds of water: Perrier, Filtered, and Tap. But I digress...

    You may conclude that doing everything manually inside private insurance companies is horrendously expensive. And you would be right. But don't dump your healthcare stock. Because the government has wisely promised to bail them out with your money. These bailouts are called "risk corridors":
    The risk corridor program kicks in when health insurers show that the claims their subscribers submit outpace premiums they paid in by more than 3 percent.
    --- WaPo

    But the cherry on top, the pièce de résistance of this whole debacle, is that Congressional Budget Office, has quietly declared,
    In its latest report on the law [that] it is no longer possible to assess the overall fiscal impact of the law.
    --- Roll Call

    Get this clearly: According to America's Fiscal Accountant, The law is so egregiously fucked up and there have been so many frivolous changes made by Bimbeaux McLightworker and his Clown Car Administration to save the law from imploding completely, that is impossible to apply Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to estimate the fiscal impact.

    Of course, Democrats don't bother to write budgets anyway. They just spend other people's money until it runs out and then they load children up with debt. So WTF, dude? Chill.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 29, 2014 at 9:36 AM

      Oops! Sorry! I forgot!!!

      That would be Perrier, Filtered, and Tap with a mandatory box of tampons.

      Delete