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Thursday, September 02, 2010
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| | Email this article • Print this article | Mighty roar over health care plan
By Chuck Warner
Closing in on eight months in office, President Barack Obama seems to be dropping favor with the electorate about as fast as an oak tree drops its leaves in the late fall.
Poll after poll discloses a constant and steady swing away from policies advocated by the lad from Illinois.
A recent Rasmussen poll has 53 percent of Americans opposing the president's health care vision, and just 42 percent supporting it. Also a whopping 44 percent of voters strongly oppose Obamacare, while only 26 percent strongly support the plan.
A USA/Gallup poll reports that independents are now siding with the town hall protesters by 2-to-1. Another Gallup poll says more Americans disapprove of Obama's health care plan by 49 percent to 43 percent.
Reports coming in from town hall meetings also reveal deep doubts in the electorate about the government's ability to responsibly run any kind of business, let alone health care.
Web sites and the blogosphere were peppered last week with repeated references to the government's most notorious business failures: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Amtrak, the post office and, most disturbing of all, the Medicare program itself, which faces trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities.
A recent USA/Gallup poll reported that 57 percent of those surveyed said the administration's $787 billion spending stimulus plan was either having no effect on the economy or was making things worse. Sixty percent voiced doubts it would have any impact next year or beyond.
It could be that national health care will force the president to break his tax pledge. His signature campaign promise was to make sure taxes would not go up for families making less that $250,000 a year.
But then he said that any health insurance overhaul must be paid for without adding to the deficit. Hence his administration is exploring soak-the-rich schemes, such as high income and capital gains taxes and a "wealth surtax."
The problem remains that even these policies can't generate nearly enough revenue to fund Obama's ambitious expansion of the welfare entitlement state.
A Pew poll reports, by 61 percent to 34 percent, Americans think those attending town hall gatherings are behaving properly.
And a Gallup poll found that by 34 percent to 21 percent, Americans identify with them. As Pat Buchanan observes, these folks at the town hall meetings are not overprivileged Ivy League brats seizing campus buildings and holding the dean hostage. No, these folks look and talk just like average Americans.
What President Obama is losing, Buchanan goes on, is not the far right, but the center of the country.
Nor is this the first time liberals have misread America. During the 1968 Democrat convention, liberals sided with anti-war demonstrators in Grant Park. And the country sided with the Chicago cops who went into the park and gave them a good thrashing.
As Tony Blankley wrote recently:
Those of us who are self-appointed advocates - who expend our efforts trying to persuade a few more people to our political point of view - must sit back in slack-jawed wonder when the great American public makes one of its great roars, as we all heard in town hall meetings across the country. And it's not only here but all around the world people are listening. Consider the following lead from the London Telegraph:
"It was a scene of breathtaking political theatre. Arlen Specter, a veteran Pennsylvania senator, stood in stony-faced shock as one of his constituents delivered a furious tirade just a few feet away. 'One day God is going to stand before you, and he's going to judge you and the rest of your damn cronies,' bellowed the senator's grey-bearded adversary. 'Then you will get your just desserts (sic).'
"Minutes later, a woman prompted a standing ovation with her emotional outpouring. 'I don't believe this is just health care. This is about systematic dismantling of this country,' she said, her voice quaking. 'I don't want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. What are you going to do to restore this country back to what our founders created, according to the Constitution?'"
"Only in America does political significance of a peaceful public voice reach such magnitude - because here, we change power without violence.
"Yet the media and others have responded to this peaceful outpouring of passionate opinion by first claiming the crowds were hired lobbyists. (So far the only evidence of rent-a-mobs was a Craig's List ad for pro-Obamacare demonstrators being offered up to $600 a week to turn up and demonstrate.)
"Then, when it became obvious that no one can organize the size and manifestly sincere passion of so many people (and the polls prove the public believed the people), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi accused those American people of being "un-American" and "carrying swastikas," while the Washington Post ran an article making fun of the unstylish clothes the people were wearing.
"Bailouts to banks, huge stimulus payoffs to special interests, nationalization of auto companies, trillions in new debt, the ideological taxing of our great carbon energy supplies, unconscionable deficits, stealing from our grandchildren, Washington talks of health rationing, forced abortions, compulsory sterilization, eugenics. Are you are Euro-socialists now? What the heck is going on in Washington?
"Maybe, just maybe, the lady is right. Maybe a national roar is a cri de coeur from the heartland to the capitol; just the beginning of a national vomiting of alien ideas being shoved down the national throat by a left-wing Congress."
Chuck Warner, a current Brownton City Council member, is the former owner/publisher of The Brownton Bulletin.
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Reader Comments
Posted: Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Article comment by:
Bill
I'll accept that Amtrak is a business failure when we accept that our roads and airports(that do NOT make a cent)are failures, as well. A miniscule amount of railroad research will help the author to learn that the private railroads of the past lost their shirts hauling passengers and couldn't wait to get out of the passenger business.
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