No Democrats

The choice is clear.  The national referendum on the Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda is on for tomorrow, when voters will choose between the Democrat and whoever is the most likely of the other candidates to beat the Democrat.  Off hand, I can't think of any race where that's not the Republican.   But how did it come to this?

We arrived at this point because we have a Democratic president and Democratic congress a who are determined to transform America, and we have an electorate that is determined to prevent them from succeeding at it.  Never in my lifetime have Americans felt so threatened by Washington as they do on the eve of this election.  

Our leftist president and his congressional allies took advantage of a financial crisis to push through a partisan agenda, which when all is said and done, was a brazen power grab.  Health care reform's individual mandate sits at the very heart voter fears.  Since it requires a person to buy a product or face government imposed penalties, the indivual mandate represents an unprecedented assertion of federal government control over the individual.  Democrats are the authors of that authoritarian legislation.

The rationale behind health care reform, aside from the usual stuff about compassion, was that it was supposed to bring government spending under control.  President Obama claimed it would bend the health care cost curve down, and since health care takes such a big chunk of the federal budget it would reduce government outlays.  As you might imagine, there were some who were skeptical. 

In what might best be described as a tactical blunder, Democrats took to accusing anybody who asked how all this was supposed to work of being a racist or just plain stupid.  They seem, even now, to be surprised that a lot of people would find this offensive.  Then came their strategic blunder.

Health care reform was advertised a weapon in the fight to bring down the deficit.  That didn't play well in Peoria, since Democrats were busy tripling the deficit with stimulus bills and bailouts.  This took a big problem for the Democrats and made it bigger, because all of this was going on while the economy was in the toilet.  Voters wanted Washington to cut the big spending and focus on jobs and the economy, but instead Democrats rammed through health care reform.

And it wasn't as if voters hadn't dropped a hint or two along the way.  A house-from-a-helicopter sized hint came in the form of Scott Brown's defeat of Martha Coakley in the special election to replace Senator Health Care himself, Ted Kennedy.  It was priceless.  Brown won that seat by advertising himself as the 41st vote against health care reform.

But Democrats passed it anyway.  There were the bribes.  Special exemptions for Lousiana and Nebraska became known as the Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Kickback respectively.  There were betrayals.  Pro-life Congressman Bart Stupak vowed to block the bill if it didn't include language to prevent federal dollars from supporting abortions.  Yet he voted for it over the objections of his constituents on a promise from Obama that there would be an Executive Order to make up for what the bill lacked. 

Finally there was the legislative trick.  Differing versions of the health care bill, one from the House and one the Senate, never went through conference committee to have their differences ironed out.  Had the bill gone to conference committee the revised legislation would have to go back to both the House and the Senate for final passage.  The Senate version had been passed before Scott Brown won his special election, which meant Democrats couldn't risk allowing a conference committee bill back to the Senate where Republicans with Scott Brown seated could block it.

So Democrats used a legislative process called reconciliation which is ordinarily reserved for budgetary issues, and the House passed the Senate version. Voters got the message, loud and clear.  Democrats were not interested in what the voters thought or wanted.  The Democrats wanted health care reform and they would have it. 

And that is what is at stake in the election tomorrow.  If tomorrow's vote leaves them in power, Democrats will take it as voter validation of all of the corruption, betrayal, and chicanery that went into the passage of health care reform.  In that event voters could expect even less respect from legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, than we get now. 

In order for the prevent that from happening, voters must defeat Democrats with their ballots.  If the latest opinion polls can be believed Americans are ready to do just that.  Tomorrow the most important vote is the vote against any Democrat.  The party must be punished. 

If we voters fail to punish the Democrats, and punish them severely, we can expect to be ignored from here on out.  And worse, we can expect to say goodbye to the America we know.  Democrats will transform it in a way that is intended to guarantee Democrat majorities.  We will become a European style social democracy with an entrenched ruling class.  The Democrats. 

So tomorrow when we vote remember this:  No Democrats.

Comments

[PJ Smith]

This is just the first skirmish in the war to roll back the government takeover of health care. The next step will be to refuse to fund any part of the complex legislation that can be defunded. In two years, we'll see if we have the will to solve the veto problem. In the meantime we'll have to figure out what the alternative plan for health care funding will be for America.

You must know, Tom, that there had to be a lot of support from the leadership of corporate America for a scheme to ultimately relieve them from the payroll burden of health care benefits. Nothing of this magnitude is accomplished without the consent of the "owners".

The democrats saw this election loss coming before the law was passed. Perhaps they thought they could control the losses better than they have done, but the change in power was part of the equation and they expect it to be temporary. They expect the structural change to be permanent and fundamental. Hillary is waiting in the wings to harden the cement of the foundation of our new "State Capitalist Pseudo-Democracy". Once they get back in full control, they expect us to be so weakened and so dependent on them that the fight for the hearts and minds of America will be over.

Unless we can somehow win. On their side is Soros, the Tides Foundation and its cohorts, the legacy media, academia, Hollywood, those masses whose group identities are important to them and the lion's share of the global corporate culture. On our side is Limbaugh, Beck, Breitbart, Palin, a handful of politicians, a few bloggers and an aging American population.

In the middle are the people I call "grazers" who don't have much political identity. They don't even watch the news on TV very often. They are stimulated by someone's celebrity and they sway with the popular mood. They also vote and feel patriotic.

Somehow, on this odd battlefield we have a chance of victory. As long as our belief in free markets and personal freedom still lives. As long as there people such as yourself, who care enough to return to the keyboard and share ideas and information, our ideals will survive.

Today the tide flows with us and we seem to have momentum. Perhaps enough to carry us away from the rocky shores of collectivist misery. Thanks for being someone who helps row the boat.

[Tom Bowler]

Thanks for your kind words, PJ.

I think the battle will ultimately be won by our side. There's too much information available, and the truth, which is so poisonous to progressives, will keep coming out. They'll try to suppress it. They talk about reviving the Fairness Doctrine, and they demonize Fox to discourage anybody from watching, but it's a losing battle. It's as if they are trying to block their own ears at the same time they're blocking ours, but they don't have enough hands to do it.