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Colin Hanna, FOXNews.com

 

Several public opinion surveys over the last ten or eleven months make it clear the American people do not want the health care reform legislation currently before Congress to pass. It’s a sea change in the public’s attitude since from the days immediately following the 2008 election, when Democrats from the newly-elected Barack Obama on down universally proclaimed that the people had given them a mandate, that they had embraced the idea that the government should increase its control of the health care system and, with it, nearly one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

 

Those claims were smoke and mirrors then and they are smoke and mirrors now. Utilizing a process that, contrary to the claims of leading Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has been anything but transparent, a bill has been produced full of special interest carve outs, tax increases and pork-laden political payoffs that, according to those who have studied the bill closely, will only make matters worse.

 

The American public has grown cynical about the whole business. Who can blame them -- especially when a majority of those in Congress will not even promise to read the bill before voting on it? Unfortunately for the people’s interests, the trickery appears to be getting worse. Nothing exemplifies the contempt that Speaker Pelosi has for the public and everyone outside her little circle of intimidated puppets better than her arrogant assertion that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” What she calls the fog of controversy is actually the process of painstakingly deciphering 2,700 pages of arcane obfuscation. The bill contains one simple reality that Pelosi and team desperately want to conceal: it will dramatically expand government’s reach into the private sector of our economy and dramatically reduce individual liberty. Read article.

Pat Caddell & Doug Schoen, Washington Post.com

 

In "The March of Folly," Barbara Tuchman asked, "Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?" Her assessment of self-deception -- "acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts" -- captures the conditions that are gripping President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership as they renew their efforts to enact health-care reform.

 

Their blind persistence in the face of reality threatens to turn this political march of folly into an electoral rout in November. In the wake of the stinging loss in Massachusetts, there was a moment when the president and the Democratic leadership seemed to realize the reality of the health-care situation. Yet like some seductive siren of Greek mythology, the lure of health-care reform has arisen again.

 

As pollsters to the past two Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, respectively, we feel compelled to challenge the myths that seem to be prevailing in the political discourse and to once again urge a change in course before it is too late. At stake is the kind of mainstream, common sense Democratic Party that we believe is crucial to the success of the American enterprise.

 

Bluntly put, this is the political reality:

 

First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Read article.

Ed Lasky, American Thinker Blog.com

 

Many people have wondered why Barack Obama and his team seem to have a soft spot for tyrants. Was it just the anti-Americanism and radicalism imbibed by Barack Obama from his youth and stoked by the ministrations of his minister, Jeremiah Wright and by his pals and comrades such as Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi? Or was it just the fad found in academia where Barack Obama has spent so many years?

 

But maybe it is something else entirely. Maybe Barack Obama just likes their style - and we know this is a man who appreciates style because he seems to be emulating their tactics and strategy. He scolds unfriendly media (i.e, media that tells the truth, such as Fox News), attacks businessmen and uses them as straw men, rails against financiers, places lawyers at the Department of Justice who will do his bidding; fires whistleblowers, such as Inspector General Gerald Walpin who want to do the people's business and not the President's business; and taunts people that he can sic the IRS on them (Richard Nixon has been reincarnated).

 

Barack Obama is getting the hang of "governing" by learning from the worst of the worst. Lately, he is engaging in tactics worthy of the Sopranos. Read article.

Jennifer Rubin, Commentary Magazine.com

 

Michael Gerson sums up the Democrats’ ObamaCare dilemma:

 

 

 

Gerson contends we got here because Obama eschewed incrementalism in favor of transformation and failed to appreciate that there was little appetite for a new entitlement program. And it didn’t help that it seemed to be only one element in a series of big-government power grabs. These were not small tactical errors but huge errors of judgment and vision. In short, he got just about everything wrong.

 

Is there a way out? Well, after HillaryCare went down to defeat, Bill Clinton moved on to other things. But Obama seems oddly eager to create a make-or-break moment – to put his entire presidency and the congressional majority of his party on the line for the sake of a bill reviled by 2/3 of the country. Read article.

 

Paul Greenberg, JWR.com

 

The daily news continues to prove a bountiful source of theories, explanations, assumptions and assertions that I don't believe for a minute.

 

For example:

 

Agreeing to insure the medical expenses of another 30 million Americans will reduce the costs of health care in this country. And not cost middle-class taxpayers a penny, either.

 

Barack Obama means it when he says the country "can't continue to spend … as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money." This was just days after Congress voted to raise the legal debt limit by some $290 billion in order to accommodate his $800-billion economic stimulus bill and record-breaking $3.5 trillion budget.

 

Letting the government rather than doctors decide which medical devices may be used and what medical procedures may be prescribed for Medicare patients will improve their health care. Ditto, slashing the budget for Medicare in general.

 

The health-care bills now before Congress contain no pork for states whose senators were savvy enough to hold out longest before supporting Obamacare. Read article.

Melanie Phillips, Telegraph.co.uk

 

As predicted here, Obama’s foreign policy has collapsed in total ignominy. We are now all very much less safe than we were before this man was elected to the White House. A new poll -- for the Democrats, forsooth -- suggests that a majority of Americans think the USA is less respected in the world than it was two years ago and think President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security.

 

You don't say.

 

As this piece in American Thinker observes:

 

 

 

What a disaster. Read article.

RiehlWorldView.com

 

On Friday, March 5 the White House announced a "summit on entrepreneurship" to build economic ties with the Islamic world, part of President Barack Obama's outreach to Muslims.

 

(Previously, in a) closely watched address, Obama said the United States was seeking a "new beginning" with the Islamic world to rebuild relations that had sharply deteriorated over the past decade.

 

The White House said it has invited participants from more than 40 countries over five continents for the April 26-27 conference in Washington.

 

"The summit will highlight the role entrepreneurship can play in addressing common challenges while building partnerships that will lead to greater opportunity abroad and at home," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

 

He said that the meeting would "identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world." Read article.

 

AJ Strata, Stara-sphere.com.Blog

 

I have lived outside DC almost all of my soon to be 50 years, and I have seen each new administration come into town with dreams and expectations and then hit reality. Many make the transition, some just crash and burn.

 

You can make change from DC, but you have to know the culture and the pitfalls. George W Bush was incredibly adept at getting what he wanted. It wasn’t until his party screwed up and lost Congress (they do the spending, not the president and not one fighting two wars), that Bush started to lose his magic. But if you look at his list of accomplishments and their scope, it is impressive.

 

Team Obama has taken their turn at this right of passage, and continue to fail to get the message. Their list contains a huge number of failures, not successes. Once you get into DC you need to learn that there is no instant power, and you need to adapt quickly. Your amazement with your fantastic ideas will not last long in the gristmill. Humility is a good starting point. Team Obama clearly demonstrates why in their crash from such high hopes.

 

What team Obama has yet to learn is you need to do two things to control DC:

 

1.       Play the power brokers right – which Obama has had some success in to a point, except he let the power brokers play him a bit too much.

 

2.       Keep public opinion on your side. Read article.

 

Quin Hillyer, American Spectator.org

 

There is something way off balance in the character of Barack Obama. Something in the realm of zealotry, with a touch of megalomania, and perhaps an authoritarian impulse too. He combines Alinskyite tactics and outlook with an air of self-assumed moral superiority in a way that fails to respect the usual, small 'r' republican limits on American presidents. All presidents, of course, think at some level that they know best about policy choices. But almost none of them (Woodrow Wilson perhaps excepted) were so willing to disdain, in pursuit of such radical policy upheavals, such intense and overwhelming public opinion as has been evident in the current health takeover attempt.

 

Grandiose plans are one thing. Most presidents fall prey to them. It's another thing entirely, though, to refuse to accept the ordinary republican restraints on implementing grandiosities without public support, and furthermore to do so by A) bending existing rules; B) directly violating multiple personal pledges; C) ignoring constitutional limits; D) directly lying; and E) demanding that other politicians sacrifice their own political careers.

 

A little humility would be nice. So would a sense that he answers to the public rather than to some self-proclaimed (and self-determined) imperative of history and/or call of destiny. What Obama seems to fail to understand is that his own, overblown self-assurance and self-mythologizing is actually hampering his own goals. One need not stretch too far to observe that one of the factors adding to public opposition to Obamacare is a growing public disquietude about the lack of responsiveness, the authoritarian certitude, and the zealous near-fanaticism of the government that would run the new health-rationing system -- all character traits as embodied by the president himself. Read article.

 

Sam Youngman, The Hill.com

 

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has become a reluctant central figure in the battle between liberals and centrists in the Democratic Party.

 

A spate of recent reports have portrayed Emanuel, known for his aggressive brand of Washington politics, as either the voice of reason in a weak, liberal White House or the wet blanket preventing President Barack Obama from pursuing the kind of change he promised as a candidate.

 

Emanuel has become the flash point in those arguments as liberals express betrayal over Obama's failure to convince Congress to pass a public option in healthcare reform and close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

 

In recent stories and columns in The Washington Post, Emanuel is described as a political pragmatist, pushing Obama to accept realistic limitations on both issues in order to secure smaller victories over abject failures. Or as the Post's Dana Milbank put it, Emanuel is "the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter."

 

The president, in turn, is depicted as unsure, beholden to liberal groups' desires before ultimately heeding Emanuel's realistic assessment of the political environment and caving to centrists in a fashion reminiscent of the triangulation of Emanuel's other White House boss -- President Bill Clinton.

 

The culprits behind those stories are not Emanuel or those who support him, Democratic strategists say, but instead the liberal Netroots crowd disgusted by what they view as appeasement to the center.

 

Some of those efforts to weaken Emanuel are coming from inside the building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, one Democratic strategist said. Read article.

 

Jack Kelly, RCP.com

 

Perhaps the surest sign an administration is in trouble comes when members of the president's political party start saying in public the president must shake up his staff.

 

The Obama administration has accomplished the remarkable feat of alienating both most moderates and many left wingers. The moderates see what he's trying to do, and are frightened and angry. The moonbats note that he hasn't yet been able to do it, and are frustrated and angry.

 

The head liberals would most like to see roll is that of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who, they think, is too willing to compromise.

 

"The Rahm Emanuel that Obama hired is the poster child for the timid, pseudo-pragmatism that is inimical to the idealistic Obama agenda so many excited voters responded to last November," wrote former Washington Post blogger Dan Froomkin.

 

The president "needs a chief of staff with the wisdom to help point him down a bold, progressive path," wrote Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive.

 

Mr. Froomkin and Mr. Rothschild are under the illusion Mr. Obama's unpopular liberal policies would be more popular if they were more liberal. But not everyone agrees. "Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter," Washington Post writer Dana Milbank concluded.

 

Despite his many flaws, Mr. Emanuel is the closest thing to a grownup in President Obama's inner circle. The others in it share an adoration of Mr. Obama, malleable ethics and inexperience on the national stage. Read article.