This morning we awake to a brave new world. By sleight of hand, trickery, and lies, the House Democrats have passed the Senate health care reform bill by inducing those who were inclined to vote against the measure with empty promises. Astoundingly, Pelosi was able to convince otherwise sensible Democrats to switch their votes by making promises that she has absolutely no ability to deliver and which everyone should have known have little chance of being delivered.
What Pelosi and company did was to load up an amendment bill with all sorts of goodies specifically targeted toward those Democrats who were maintaining no votes on the Senate bill. The problem is the bill that goes to the President’s desk is the Senate bill – not the amendment bill. That bill still has to go to the Senate to be voted on by the Senate. This is where it becomes obvious that those who changed their votes because of measures placed in the amendment bill have been duped – in some cases probably willingly. Most of those measures have absolutely no chance of passage in the Senate. Indeed, the Senate Republicans have made quite clear that they do not intend to pass any of the measures and that they will publicize the individual bribes which induced each of the former no-voting Democrats to change their votes.
Of course one presumes that the members of the House know the rules and that the promises being made were unlikely to be kept. Therefore, the only conclusion that one can draw from this is that these members are full-blown cynics who believe they can go back to their constituents and claim that they only changed their votes because of the promises made to them without ever mentioning that they knew full well that those promises were illusory. In other words, the amendment bill was simply cover to allow those Dems who were afraid of their constituents to flout the desires of the folks back home. Indeed, Nancy Pelosi, who had considered using the “deem and pass” rules of House procedure for this landmark legislation, spoke to liberal bloggers on Monday saying, “Nobody wanted to vote for the Senate bill….It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know, but I like it because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.” While they ended up voting anyway, the amendment bill is designed to give Democrats with cranky constituents cover. Each knew that it was the Senate bill that would go to the President’s desk.
Probably the most astounding reversal came from Bart Stupak, whose amendment banning federal expenditures on abortion caused problems during the initial round of passage. Indeed, the Stupak Amendment was one of the major differences between the House version and the Senate version of health care reform. The Senate version contains no limitations on federal spending to kill babies. Now Stupak has aligned himself with those who urge American women to kill babies for convenience sake. He must know that a presidential executive order is entirely worthless as the President cannot, by executive order, repeal a bill passed through Congress. The President has no power to prevent the operation of the Senate mandate that abortion be covered by the new health care plan. Yet Stupak willfully allowed himself to be duped into compromising whatever principles he may have once had.
This morning, the Change™ promised by our savior, Barack Obama, is headed to his desk. That change will be fundamental and, I fear, irrevocable. I was speaking to a friend who has a two-year-old daughter. His daughter will grow up in a country where every time she has a sniffle, she will run to the government to take care of her. Her individual relationship with government will be substantially different from the traditional one in which Americans viewed the federal government as a threat to liberty. Instead, she will see the government as the source of her rights and welfare, the font from which all good things come. After an entire generation or two of this new relationship, it is impossible to imagine a true conservatism taking root in the psyche of the American people again. We will never again be independent from the care of, and control by, an all-encompassing government. And once that impulse to individual responsibility for our lives has been quashed there is no impediment to despotic rule or even outright dictatorship, which will be instituted for our good.
- Karl and Willmoore protesting the health care bill
It was with this thought that I drove to Washington D.C. this weekend to join in the protest against the end of our American experiment. The photo above shows that there were thousands of like-minded people who also made the same trip. I met with fellow Conservative Donnybrook contributor Willmoore. Willmoore and I took the Metro to the Capitol and were greeted at the top of the steps by an operative from the Republican National Committee who was passing out signs that read, “Listen to me!” The West lawn of the Capitol was packed with people who rejected the notion of a government large enough to give us everything. While we listened to House members and ordinary citizens take turns at the microphone, someone reported that the Park Service had estimated the crowd at 25,000 people. And, even as that announcement was made, more continued to join the throng.
I had attended a local Tea Party rally in Indianapolis last summer and Willmoore had attended the Rally for the Republic back in 2008. While outwardly the basic format of the Tea Party protests where ordinary citizens addressed the crowds alternating with Tea Party-friendly politicians was followed at this rally, the overall tenor seemed to have shifted ever so slightly to the mainstream Party line. Indeed, the Tea Party has been crashed. On the other hand, not a single Republican voted for the health care overhaul bill so it appears that at least they heard the voice of the people. It remains to be seen if the Senate follows through with its promise to obstruct the overhaul. At this point, we are left to hope that the Supreme Court will read the Constitution and realize that nothing in Article I, Section 8 authorizes the Congress to mandate health care for all and strike down the bill. The only other hope is that after November 2, the Republicans will find a way to repeal the law before it goes into effect, at which point it will never be repealed. Indeed, if universal health care goes into effect, it will only ever be expanded, like all entitlements.
Upon my return after twenty hours’ round trip in the car, my wife asked me if I thought the trip was worth it. Did the presence of thousands of people outside the Capitol mean anything? In the short run, it appears that our exertions were wasted. After all, the Democrats passed the health care bill and the Senate bill will now go to the President’s desk. But, had there been no one outside the House chambers, the decision for the Dems who caved would have been easier. They could have argued that nobody cared. This way at least they know that there is an angry mob ready to take their seats from them. The same goes for the Republicans. It is good (and perhaps a little surprising) that not a single Republican voted for the bill. Had there been no crowds outside, one wonders if that would have been the case. In the long run, it will be interesting to see if the coherence that we have seen among the Republicans in this fight will remain once the amendment package goes to the Senate. Let us see if the Senate Republicans can show the same mettle that their brothers and sisters on the other end of the Capitol have shown. If they have, I believe, it will be in part because of the crowds that gathered in Washington this weekend. That may be the true measure of whether all the driving was worth it.
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One particular meme that I’ve seen cropping up among the Tea Party circles is those signs with pics of Bush and Cheney, along with the line “Miss Me Yet?” This is something that never fails to send the vomit shooting up the back of my throat. I won’t recount, yet again, the multitude of sins against limited government and fiscal sanity that have been promulgated by the Bush-bots and their neoconservative counselors. Sure, as Karl pointed out to me this weekend, for all his wretchedness, McCain probably wouldn’t have been foisting socialized (or cartelized) healthcare on us, at least this year (although it’s not inconceivable). Nevertheless the prominence of these die-hard Bushie fanboys among the supposedly revolutionary Tea Partiers is the number-one piece of evidence that the movement has been co-opted by amoral GOP set and its talk-radio enablers.
