Live by the Blue Dog Die by the Blue Dog

So the Democrats are probably going to pull the public option off the table. The Republicans are patting themselves on the back and doing high fives. Guess what? I don't think the public option was ever anything but a bargaining chip. Also the Republicans did NOTHING!!!! By simple math you have to know they couldn't do anything.

Here is my personal opinion. Maybe it is a conspiracy theory but I don't consider it that at all. I believe in the back of the room the blue dogs have gotten together with the hard core leadership (also known as the Marxists) and have agreed that with the public option off the table they can declare a victory and go back to their voters and tell them they protected the voters. After the smoke clears the government still gets total control. With or without a public option they set the ground rules of who insure what and when. There will still be mandates for everyone to carry coverage, there will be no provision to allow competition across state lines. There will be no tort reform. There will be no tax benefit for individual coverage so in the end you will get your coverage from your employer or you will get it from Der Commissar. Just as they set out to do all along.

Have you wondered why the private insurers have been in favor of Obama care all along? Because whatever is agreed to will allow them to keep their oligarchy. No smaller competitor will come along to challenge them. With competition across state lines more competition could have upset the status quo. When the blue dogs eventually cave, Aetna and Blue Cross and United Healthcare will keep the market share they have and can tell their stockholders that they worked with the President to save health care. They will not be forced to endure more stiff competition. As Adam Smith surmised no one hates Capitalism like a businessman.

Why will the blue dogs cave? It is simple, they are Democrats and while they need to stand up for their voters they also need the support that the party in power can deliver. Make Pelosi and Reid look stupid and you will get no plumb committees, you get no help getting re-elected which is only a year away for the House members and you get nothing from the party money coffers. They will fold and they will claim victory and they will puff out their chest while they attend the signing ceremony with the Messiah.

What happens to the Republicans when this happens? Well they will continue to lose because they don't believe in anything. They don't stand for small government they don't believe that they can win with that. They don't believe in the founders because they know the Obama generations wouldn't know Thomas Paine from Elvis Presley. It simply isn't important to them. They will try to be Obama light and they will have another embarrassing crushing defeat in 2010.

And what about those of us who pay the bills? We will continue to do so. Some will just stop paying attention because they will feel like no one is listening. Some will get more radical. Some will follow third parties and some will follow populist charlatans. At some point the House and Senate will change hands, but it will be because the people are tired of the Democrats not because they are aching for the Republicans.

I hope with all my heart I am wrong, but in recent history I haven't been.

If not for straw men ...

I think everyone understands the meaning of a 'straw man' in areas of debating or speech making. The definition on Wiki is "To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position." Increasingly President Obama defeats the straw man.

He refutes that doing nothing is not an option. No responsible Republican activist wants to do nothing. John McCain ran a terrible campaign for President but had a very responsible and prudent health care reform plan. President Bush tried encouraged congress continually to reform the tax favoritism currently in place for employer based health care. There is a belief on the right that if the tax benefits accorded to employer health care were given to non employer health insurance than companies would devise more plans that are more affordable for individuals and small businesses. Even if you don't believe this, it is not the same as doing nothing.

President Obama says that Republicans are trying to damage his presidency in combating his brand of health care reform. He charges that they are practicing politics. On its face this is ludicrous. Of course the Republicans are interested in their parties' performance. I suspect he didn't call it political when as a Senator he rejected every effort at reform proposed by former President Bush. I don't suppose he thought it political when his party rejected every attempt to reform Fannie Mae to regulate their madness and head off the housing crisis. As usual someone playing politics to President Obama is someone he doesn't agree with, just as a special interest is one that does not contribute to him. Let's say for argument that the Republicans don't have an ideological reason to oppose him and are just doing it 'for politics'. They have 40 Senators and less than two hundred House of Representative members. They couldn't stop a vote on what to have for lunch. The fact remains that the most powerful opposition is coming from his own party in the form of freshman and 'blue dog' Democrats.

He continues to make everyone a villain except himself. The doctors are villains, the insurance companies are villains, the opposition politicians are villains, the profit motive is villain. While he provides much clarity he provides no leadership. Only he is to be considered to be pure. He made the charge that doctors remove tonsils to make more money. If he has an instance of this, that sounds like medical malpractice to me. Maybe he should turn it over to the authorities. I know from my personal experience that both my doctor and my children's pediatrician would make nothing from a tonsillectomy since neither are surgeons. Straw man or outright lie?) His idea of changing the way business is done in Washington as he promised so much in his campaign is simply getting bi-partisan support only if they agree with him. While I don't necessarily fault him, after all his party won so they get to set the agenda. I do blame the voters who bought his bill of goods. They bought his song and dance about hope and change even though nothing in his past pointed to him being anything but a committed leftist.

Mr. President how about putting away the straw men and answering these questions:

- How exactly does your plan reduce costs?
- How exactly is it competition when the private competitors have to follow the rules set down by the government option?
- How is it competition when the government can print money but private enterprise cannot?
- If the opposition is the Republicans how can they stop this plan with such a small minority?
- if the government is so able to be more efficient how do we explain the deplorable Veterans Administration hospitals, the cost overruns of medicare and the cost overruns of Medicaid?
- Exactly what is the breakdown of the un-insured and shouldn't the plan find a way to attract those people instead of replacing the entire existing system?

I suspect those and other questions will not be addressed. After all anyone who disagrees with him is a tool of special interests so he doesn't feel the need to respond.