Friday, April 20, 2012

Democrats Man the Obamacare Lifeboats

This week people around the world have been commemorating the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic.  The timing of this inauspicious anniversary seems rather appropriate, since, as The Hill notes this morning, Democrats have finally figured out that their 2700-page health care monstrosity hit a metaphorical iceberg with the American people, causing many to abandon ship:

Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC): “I think we would all have been better off — President Obama politically, Democrats in Congress politically, and the nation would have been better off — if we had dealt first with the financial system and the other related economic issues and then come back to healthcare.”
Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA): Obamacare should have been done “in digestible pieces that the American public could understand and that we could implement.” (Keep this quote in mind the next time someone asks why Republicans don’t have a 2700-page Obamacare “alternative.”)
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): “I think we paid a terrible price for healthcare….I would not have pushed it as hard. As a matter of fact, after [Sen.] Scott Brown [R-Mass.] won [in January 2010], I suggested going back. I would have started with financial reform, but certainly not healthcare.”
Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA): “I’ll be real frank here…I think that the manner in which the health-care reform issue was put in front of the Congress, the way that the issue was dealt with by the White House, cost Obama a lot of credibility as a leader.”
Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA): “It [Obamacare] did hurt us, there’s no doubt about it. The climate out there was really ugly because of it.”

Former Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL): “I think [Obamacare] is the single least popular piece of major domestic legislation in the last 70 years. It was not popular when it passed; it’s less popular now….I think the worst thing that could happen to Barack Obama’s reelection campaign would be if he had to spend four months this fall explaining what ObamaCare 2 would look like.”
Both individually and collectively, these quotes from Democrat Members of Congress bring to mind several key points.  First, whatever happened to “Those who voted for healthcare will find it an asset and those who voted against it will find it a liability?”  (Apparently these Democrats haven’t gotten word about the “Heck yeah, I like Obamacare” memo either.)  Second, with “friends” like this, does Obamacare really need enemies?  Not that the law is lacking for opponents, because – as Republicans have said all along, and events this week have proved – the only thing bipartisan about the 2700 page law has been the opposition to it.