Supporters of the Democrats’ health care bill offer the following take on Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Martha “Kennedy” Coakley, a plea they hope will draw on voters’ sense of fairness and magnanimity:
If Brown wins, the health care bill will not be passed. It is a terrible shame that something this nation has frittered away a year debating and Congress has spent a year drafting, something that may not get another chance again—if at all—for a whole generation, could be dismantled because of the obstinacy of one man who wins a special election in a tiny state. Brown may even derail Obama’s entire agenda.
As if it will do any good, here’s a point-by-point rebuttal of this selfless appeal by Democrats to our leftist instincts:
(1) The point of a debate is to have two sides present their cases and see which makes the better argument. The outcome is not predetermined, much as Democrats would like it to be and have tried to make it so. Republicans spoke, Democrats spoke, and the American people made up their minds: Republicans won.
(2) The fact that we spent a year debating this horrendous bill, in all its myriad forms, is indeed deplorable, when we could have been talking about how to encourage the Iranian protestors, win in Afghanistan, or abolish the Department of Education. But just because gallons of ink have been spilled and billions of megabytes have been transmitted and trillions of cubic feet of C02 have been exhaled thrashing out numerous claims made by Democrats and debunked by Republicans, doesn’t mean we have to embrace the fallacy of sunken costs and pass something that stinks just to rationalize our squandered effort.
Making a $100 down payment on a $1,000 dishwasher offered by a fraudulent mail-order company that folds does not obligate us to send the company the other $900 so our first $100 isn’t wasted. If any Democrats want to silently change their positions on the bill and pretend they felt that way all along, I promise you that Republicans will be tactful enough to go along with the charade.
(3) If it isn’t right to pass this legislation in the current generation, just as it wasn’t right to pass it in Hillary Clinton’s generation, or Truman’s generation, or FDR’s generation, then we can afford to wait at least another generation to debate it again, if liberals really insist on holding and losing this contest once more.
(4) Saying that the special election in Massachusetts could destroy the whole health care plan is like saying that the failure of an asteroid to demolish the court building where Bernard Madoff was sentenced destroyed his chance for freedom. The success of this health care bill has been dangling like an anvil from a spider web since last summer. The special election in Massachusetts is only the latest in many gusts of wind to threaten to crash the Democrats’ hopes to the ground.
(5) Saying that the travesty of Democrats’ health care bill not passing is due to Scott Brown’s stubbornness upon being elected is like saying that the travesty of Confederate soldiers’ dying is due to Abraham Lincoln’s stubbornness upon being elected. In addition to its being the right course of action, if Brown wins and votes no on the bill, it will be because he was explicitly elected for that purpose alone, to take that specific action by itself. Indeed, he barely had to say a word about any of the other issues in order to win fanatical political and financial support from Republicans, Independents, and Democrats in Massachusetts and across the country.
Promising to kill the health care bill is not just the biggest, but the only functional plank in Brown’s platform. Senator Brown could turn around next month and introduce a bill using Medicare funds to subsidize partial-birth abortions for illegal Islamist immigrant tax cheats with Al-Qaeda ties, and he would still be Republicans’ hero for having voted down the health care bill.
(6) If Obama isn’t buried under a pile of political debris after his dustup with the 41st Senator, and dares to try to foist cap-and-trade, Stimulus II, or other reckless spending debacles onto a battered and bruised Congress, he will find it even harder to pass such legislation than he did the health care bill, and that is saying something. Indeed, one of the fringe benefits of voting for Brown is that he will block not only the health care bill but anything like it that comes down the chute.
As an opponent of the health care bill, here’s my take on Tuesday’s election, which I hope will draw on any remaining connection to reality liberals may have:
Even if Brown loses, the health care bill still will not be passed. There are too many gaping discrepancies between the two versions of the bill to be reconciled; Blue Dog Democrats are too nervous about their own reelection campaigns this fall; and soon-to-be-elected Republican majorities in the House and Senate will do everything in their power to reverse any steps taken to enact this wretched bill.
They may even derail Obama’s entire agenda.
