Post-ObamacareApocalypse: The Way Forward Thursday

7:00pm: Jonah Goldberg, one of my favorite conservative columnists and a good guy with whom to share a serving of nachos at Appleby's, writes of leftist consternation at the conservative response to the passing of Obamacare:

A lot of people on the left cannot come to grips with the conservative "overreaction" to Obamacare. I don't think it's an overreaction, and I can help liberals understand what's happening. Just consider the Patriot Act. Here was a law that affected a teeny-weeny number of people. Almost all of the horrible things it did never happened. Remember all that teeth-gnashing about searched libraries? Totally bogus.

And yet, people all over the country got their dresses over their heads about the Patriot Act. Why? Well, I would argue partly out of addlepated paranoia, ignorance, and Bush hatred. They would argue it was out of deep-seated principle. Let's compromise and say that for many, it was both, and for a few, it was all about principle.

Well, opposition to PPACA seems vastly more rational to me. By its very design it affects everyone. It costs them money. It will cost them freedom. It will cost our country money, medical innovation, and mounds of debt. It involves far, far more government intrusion into our lives than the Patriot Act. And yet, many of the same people who considered the Patriot Act an American Nuremburg Law think this is one of the greatest moments in American history.

Do you get it now, progressives, why we are so up-in-arms about this little piece of legislation? It really will cost us money, time, freedom, and innovation--which means lives. This is a bad bad bill. By the time its costs are fully calculated and comprehended(the next generation of economic historians), it may well surpass Smoot Hawley.

Like I've said, the Brits declined because the cost to support their welfare state forced withdrawal around the world. This is our future if this thing stands and expands into Euro-social welfare. American decline.

BTW, you really should subscribe to Jonah's "Goldberg File." It's a real treat.

2:28pm: Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey has a post up with some great quotes and video of Charles Krauthammer, doctor-genius, and Dan Mitchell, Cato Institute, warning about the coming debate about a VAT. If you don't know what a VAT is, I recommend you click the link and read the wiki entry. A VAT might be okay if it were to take the place of existing taxes like payroll taxes, but it won't be. It will be just another revenue stream for the feds to shove big government down your throat.

Meanwhile at Reason.com (free minds and free markets!) Jacob Sullum explains why this healthcare mandate is not exactly, you know, constitutional and why a legal challenge just may be successful.

There's hope yet.

Finally (for the time being), if you are pro-life and thought there was a home for you in the Democrat party, well, sorry, you're wrong. William McGurn explains how Obamacare exposes the Democrat Party as the Party of Death (also, you'll note, the title of a book by Ramesh Ponnuru).

1:37pm BST: The Dark Lord, Karl Rove, provided a good roadmap to electoral victory in his column today. I love the fact that we conservatives love this guy while leftists think he is the devil incarnate. Don't they know? This just makes us love him all the more.

Democrats claim they've rallied their left-wing base. But that base isn't big enough to carry the fall elections, particularly after the party alienated independents and seniors. The only way Democrats win a base election this year will be if opponents of this law stay home.

To keep that from happening, Republican candidates must focus on ObamaCare's weaknesses. It will cost $2.6 trillion in its first decade of operation and is built on Madoff-style financing. For example, it double counts Social Security payroll taxes, long-term care premiums, and Medicare savings in order to make it appear more fiscally responsible. In reality, ObamaCare isn't $143 billion in the black, as Democrats have claimed, but $618 billion in the red. And giving the IRS $10 billion to hire about 16,000 agents to enforce the new taxes and fees in ObamaCare will drive small business owners crazy.

Republicans have a powerful rallying cry in "repeal, replace and reform." Few voters will want to keep onerous mandates that hit individuals and taxes that hobble economic growth. Rather than spending a trillion dollars on subsidies for insurance companies and Medicaid expansion, as ObamaCare does, Republicans should push for giving individuals the same health-insurance tax break businesses get, which would cost less.

Republicans must also continue to press for curbing junk lawsuits, enabling people to buy insurance across state lines, increasing the amount of money they can sock away tax free for medical expenses, and permitting small businesses to pool risk.

Opponents of ObamaCare have decisively won the battle for public opinion. As voters start to feel the pain of this new program, Republicans will be in a stronger position if they stay in the fight, make a principled case, and lay out a competing vision.

This is as good a place as any to point out something that frequently gets forgotten.

I'm really really tired of people talking and acting as though the left wing of the Democrat party is on par with the right wing of the Republican party.

When the country breaks down 40% conservative, 40% moderate, and 20% liberal, the left wing of the Democrat party is not only a hell of a lot smaller than the right wing of the Republican party, it is a hell of a lot further from the natural ideological center of this country.

So all you self-styled post-partisan centrist moderates, who keep trying to say, "well, they're both extremes and bad" and like to pound on conservative wingers as being as "damaging" and as far out of the mainstream as liberal wingers, you're wrong.

Did anyone (besides me) happen to watch the Obamacare debate (limited, though it was) Sunday night on CSPAN? I think Dan Henninger's characterization of the Republicans and Democrats that night is spot on:

Spring renewal and baseball's new season are upon us, so let's quote the optimism of Yogi: It isn't over until it's over. I thought 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday night in Washington was the Republican Party's finest hour in a long time. When the voting stopped, the screen said the number of Republicans voting for Mr. Obama's bill was zero. Not one. Nobody.

Pristine opposition is being spun as a Republican liability. It looks to me like a Republican resurrection. The party hasn't yet discovered what it should be, but this clearly was a party discovering what it cannot be.

Put it this way: If you produce a bill that Olympia Snowe of Maine cannot vote for, you have not produced legislation "for the generations." You have not even produced legislation that is liberal. You have produced legislation from the left. You have produced once-in-a-lifetime legislation that no Republican from any constituency across America could vote for.

Watching Paul Ryan, John Boehner, and Mike Pence I was as happy with Republican leadership as I have been in a long time. Finally some backbone. Finally some principle. Finally they stood up to the Democrats and exposed them as the out-of-touch, tax and spend statists that they are. As Henninger points out, this whole debate puts liberals who aren't employed by the government in a tough spot.

Liberals in the private sector have to come to grips with the fact that what they do for a living is an abstraction to the people they are sending to Washington. Nobody at the top of the party is much interested in them anymore. House and Senate Democrats hammered insurance, pharma and medical-device makers with taxes and intimidation. It wasn't just politics. It was belief. With this bill, the party made the transition from market unionism to Alinskyism, from a politics tempered by the marketplace to one that milks the marketplace.

Count Henninger and myself among those who think "Repeal!" is a good rallying cry in the run-up to the 2010 election. First repeal the Democrats in Congress, then in 2012 the Democrat in the White House then, once he's gone, Obamacare will quickly follow him out the door.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Roger Kimball On Howard Zinn & American History

Pretty accurate, I'd say.

With Howard Zinn, contemporary American academia found its court historian. Zinn, who died January 27 at 87, was like a gigantic echo chamber, accurately reproducing—and actively reinforcing—every left-wing cliché with which the academy has abetted its sense of election these past several decades. . . . Zinn's biography tells us that he was the author of "more than 20 books." But only one matters: A People's History of the United States. Published in 1980 with appropriately modest expectations—it had, I read somewhere, an initial print run of only 5,000 copies—the book went on to sell some 2 million and is still going strong. Its Amazon sales rank as of February 1, 2010, was 7. Seven. That's a number most authors would climb over broken bottles to achieve 30 days after their books were published. Here it is 30 years on.

How to explain such phenomenal success? The publisher had doubtless assayed the book's intellectual merits and proceeded accordingly. Left out of account was the presumption of its political message. The extremity and consistency of that message—that America is and always has been an evil, exploitative country—guaranteed its success among the tenured radicals to whom we have entrusted the education of our children. More to the point, this history "from the perspective of the slaughtered and mutilated" nudged out all other contenders for the prize of becoming the preferred catechism in American—that is to say, anti-American—history.

(via the WSJ, natch)

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

I Still Support Sarah Palin, Haters To The Left

What she has--charisma, charm & good looks--cannot be taught. And she has them in spades. Where she may lack or be a little deficient--policy (though not energy), etc.--she can learn.

To my mind, any objective survey of the national Republican political landscape--Romney, Huckabee, Jindal, Gingrich, whoever--must conclude that Sarah Palin is the one with the most potential.

If she didn't have so much popular appeal, her antagonists in Alaska & elsewhere would not be so dogged in their attacks.

For instance, check out the latest from John Fund in today's Political Diary:

The Associated Press report yesterday that Sarah Palin was about to be found guilty of violating state ethics laws set off a round of speculation that the Alaska governor was resigning later this month one step ahead of the sheriff.

In reality, it appears as if the improper leak may be little more than a parting shot against her by her critics, who have filed a total of 19 ethics complaints and hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests against her. The leaks indicated that the Alaska Personnel Board has concluded that Governor Palin used her public image and notoriety to raise money for a legal defense fund she created to pay the costs of defending herself against ethics complaints. The only sanction it recommends is that she no longer accept direct payments from the fund to reimburse her $500,000 in legal expenses.

So far none of the ethics complaints filed against Ms. Palin have resulted in any findings of wrongdoing. The leaked portions of the report indicate that an investigator concluded that because an average citizen would have been unable to raise large sums to pay for legal bills, Governor Palin should not be able to either. "Governor Palin is able to generate donations because of the fact that she is a public official and a public figure. Were it not for the fact that she is governor and a national political figure, it is unlikely that many citizens would donate money to her legal defense fund," says a preliminary finding by the investigator.

Team Palin pushed back quickly. The governor herself used Twitter to send an abbreviated defense of herself: "In violation of Ethics Act more allegations were filed today by serial complainer; gave to press be4 we could respond; ridiculous, wasteful," she tweeted. "Some ask why not sue abusers of Ethics Act bc state wastes 1000's hrs/millions of tax dollars to fight (and win!) frivolous charges, tho it costs political critics NOTHING to file/play their wasteful game; They should debate policy in political arena, not hide w/process abuse."

Other Palin supporters joined in. Thomas Van Flein, her personal attorney, noted: "There has been no board finding of an ethics violation and there is a detailed legal process to follow before there is a final resolution." The head of her legal defense fund, Kristan Cole, told reporters: "This legal expense fund was thoroughly vetted by numerous attorneys from Alaska to the East Coast [and is meant] to help the Governor with the crushing legal fees she has incurred solely because of her public service."

No one doubts Ms. Palin has made a series of boneheaded public relations moves since her surprise choice as John McCain's running-mate last year. But the ethics charges strike many observers as bogus or nitpicky. They have included challenges to her out-of-state trips that appear dubious and even a complaint that her husband, Todd, wore a jacket made by a company that sponsored his snow-mobile races.

What the leftists have done to Sarah Palin is classic, well, leftist behavior: Use of courts through frivolous suits, etc., in pursuit of the politics of personal destruction.

I mean, can anyone believe the latest charge?--that she used her notoriety as governor & former VP candidate to raise money for her legal defense fund to defend herself against frivolous ethics charges like the one that says she used her personal notoriety to raise money to defend herself and I think you get the picture. Ridiculous.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

NB #4: A Meta Look At Bias & The 'Fairness Doctrine'

My latest post for NewsBusters, examining a series of polls by Rasmussen on bias in the media, campaign finance and the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" is up. Check it out:

Polls: Public Dislikes Bias, Dems Want 'Fairness'

Even after looking at the numbers and reading liberal rantings on the interweb, I still don't get why the left is so infatuated with government regulation of the media.

The only conclusion I can come to is that they don't like free speech. They only like their speech. And they will impose speech codes at universities, and government control of the media, wrapped in euphemisms like the "Fairness Doctrine," to stifle everything else.


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Dangerous & Strange Bedfellows

In the most recent issue of "Natty Review" appears an article by Daniel Pipes--director of the Middle East Forum and Taube/Diller distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. In it, Pipes discusses the pragmatic alliance between "Islamists, Marxists, and the radical Left."

It is both persuasive and alarming.

For the hurried, an outline will be provided below, for those with a few minutes on their hands, click here.

Allied Menace
By Daniel Pipes

Overview: Despite their obvious ideological differences, Islamists and Leftists have begun to make common cause in their efforts against Western Civilization including the U.S., Great Britain & Israel.

Examples: Hugo Chavez's alliance with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Ken Livingstone the Trotskyite former mayor of London; Noam Chomsky, friend of Hezbollah; Ella Vogelaar, Dutch minister for housing; the Workers World's (an American Communist newspaper) laudatory obituary of Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mughniyeh; Carlos the Jackal & others actually converted to Islam; Norman Mailer called the 9/11 perpetrators "brilliant"; Michel Foucault supported the Iranian Revolution and called Ayatollah Khomeini a "saint"; during the Cold War, Islamists favored the Soviet Union and "the U.S.S.R. receive[d] but a small fraction of the hatred and venom directed at the United States;" the Cairo Anti-War Conference. The list goes on

Why the "unholy alliance?"

1. Similar enemy--Western Civilization, the U.S., Great Britain, Israel, Jews, believing Christians, and international capitalists.

2. Shared political goals: they want coalition forces to lose in Iraq, an end to the War on Terror, the spread of anti-Americanism, and the destruction of Israel.

3. Marxism-Leninism and Islamism have historical and philosophical ties: a stages view of history; crossover of Leftist thinkers like Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, Jean-Paul Sartre, Lenin, & Stalin. Additionally, Marxists have replaced the failed rise of the worker with the rise of the Islamists (ie. the Iranian Revolution, 9/11. et al.)

4. A pragmatic path to power. Both groups are able to subordinate conflicting pillars of their respective ideologies in order to combat their common enemy--here again, Western Civilization. Add to the examples listed above the Stop the War Coalition whose committee members are drawn from the British Communist party and the Muslim Association of Britain.

Conclusion: Where communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, Castroists and others "had been clinging to the dregs of a clapped-out cause," Islamists bring a new proletariat. This dangerous and strange partnership is a threat to Western Civilization which "must be exposed, rejected, resisted, and defeated."


If you have tips, questions, comments, suggestions, or requests for subscription only articles, email us at lybberty@gmail.com.