By Mr. Curmudgeon

In an ObamaCare speech given at the White House, replete with white-smocked death panel ghouls serving as a backdrop, the president crystallized his administration and political party’s style of governing. “Everything there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it. So now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care…” Or, as the New York Times put it, “In his remarks, the president refrained from using the word ‘reconciliation,’ the parliamentary tactic that Democrats are expected to employ to avoid a Republican filibuster and win passage with a simple majority.” Translation: “Shut up, America, and do what your betters command.”

“They’re making a vigorous effort to try and jam this down the throats of the American people, who don’t’ want it,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), “…and we think resorting to these kind of tactics, to thumb your nose at the American people, is something that ought to be resisted.” Funny, resisting ObamaCare is what Tea Partiers have been doing since last August’s health care town hall meetings. Republicans are a day late and a dollar short where opposing Obama is concerned. But what do you expect when its standard-barer, John McCain, established the tone of Republican surrender in 2008.

The Party of Lincoln owes the American people big time. And one sure way to make amends is clearly and unapologetically to state that the aim of the Republican congressional campaign later this year is to elect a real opposition party intent on repealing ObamaCare if passed. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s defeat in the Texas governor’s race clearly shows that the age of Republican Democrat-Lite accommodation is over. And if Republicans think Tea Party-Lite will suffice, they better think again.

Obama’s transformative effect on the country is not quite what his worshiping personality cult imagined it would be. America has transformed into an anti-Keynesian, anti-bailout, anti-tax and anti-death panel nation. It would be nice if there were a political party to represent these views.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

If you think the battle over ObamaCare is over, think again. Last weekend, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she intends to pass the behemoth health care plan using House parliamentary procedures over the objections of a majority of Americans. That doing so endangers Democrats standing for reelection, doesn’t bother her in the least. “We’re not here just to self perpetuate our service in Congress,” Pelosi said of politically vulnerable Democrats. “They know that this will take courage. It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare.” She makes a valid point. The very government programs that now teeter on the verge of bankruptcy were unpopular with Americans when lawmakers first debated the measures in Congress years ago. But like the schoolyard drug pusher, Pelosi knows once the customer is hooked, they learn to love their addiction and will pay any price to maintain it.

Pelosi has proven political pundits wrong. Many assumed that when President Obama moved into the White House, corrupt Chicago-style politics would follow in his wake. Instead, the colorful lunatic fringe of Pelosi’s San Francisco Bay Area has become the nation’s political center of gravity.

Representing a hard-left district, Pelosi knows that by thwarting the will of a majority of Americans, she has little to fear from her like-minded constituents. Pelosi also knows her so-called Republican opposition. As columnist Mark Steyn noted in a blog post on nationalreview.com:

“The Dems will be punished; the Republicans will take over the committee chairmanships and be content, as they often are, to be in office rather than in power; and after a brief time out the Democrats will return to find their new statist behemoth still in place. From their point of view, it makes perfect sense.

“The question is: What are Republicans willing to do about it?”

That’s a great question.

That even one Republican showed up to Obama’s Blair House health care summit was a bad sign. Democratic pushers asked Republicans to get onboard by lacing the ObamaCare narcotic with their own ingredients. The Republican argument, so far, is not against the idea of nationalized health care, just the best way to achieve it. The mantra from Republicans is “let’s start health care reform from scratch.” Not “let’s scratch health care reform forever.” Democrats may be tone deaf to public outrage over ObamaCare, but Republicans seem utterly clueless.

After the 2010-midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi may be relegated to the backbenches of Congress, but she’s okay with that. History tells her that when Democrats are out of power, Republicans make good nanny-state caretakers.

On ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said, “Washington will be consumed with the Democrats trying to jam this through in a very messy procedure…and then for the rest of the year, we’re going to be involved in a campaign to repeal it. And every Democratic candidate in the country is going to be defined by this unpopular health care bill at a time when the real issues are jobs, terror and debt.” As of today, Alexander is the only Republican to publicly mention the idea of repealing ObamaCare if passed. That leaves just 218 of his fellow House and Senate nanny-state Republicans to gather their wits and develop a spine.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Of the health care summit assembled at Blair House last Thursday, the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson said it best. “…Democrats carried a burden into the meeting. On the wrong side of political momentum, they needed a breakthrough of some sort. They didn’t get it.” When House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) referred to ObamaCare as a “dangerous experiment” that would “bankrupt our country,” Obama waved-off these obvious truths by saying, “John, every so often, we have a pretty good conversation trying to get on some specifics, and then we go back to, you know, the standard talking points.”

Poor Rep. Boehner, he just cannot suspend his belief in tangible, three-dimensional reality long enough to consider that anything run by government will drive down costs and improve services. It may never have happened at any time in history, but if we click the heals of our ruby red slippers three times and say, “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” we’ll find ourselves back in Kansas with Toto. Dorothy ended up in a kind of Obama reality – back in dreary, Depression-era, Dust Bowl Kansas. And Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are determined roll over the will of the majority of Americans like a Kansas twister.

Sensing that this may be the last time Democrats ever have this kind of power again, Speaker Pelosi is determined to pass ObamaCare by whatever means available. According to CNN, “The House speaker called the legislative tool known as reconciliation ‘a simple majority’ and said, ‘that’s what we’re asking the Senate to act upon.’” However, CNN reminds us, “Democrats passed their version of health care with a slim majority and will be missing several votes because of vacancies…Another major obstacle in passing the Senate health bill in the House and getting it to the president’s desk is abortion. By some estimates, close to a dozen anti-abortion Democrats may vote against the bill because they say it’s not strict enough in making sure taxpayer dollars are not spent on the procedure.” It’s humbling to think that the silenced voice of millions of the unborn is more eloquent in its opposition to ObamaCare than the Tea Party or the confused and tongue-tied Republican leadership in Congress.

Urging on Obama, Pelosi and Reid, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes, “…Democrats can have the last laugh. All they have to do – and they have the power to do it – is finish the job, and enact health reform.” Actually, the voters will have the last laugh in 2010 and 2012.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Dim bulb Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is concerned about domestic violence. “I met with some people while I was home dealing with domestic abuse. It has gotten out of hand. Why? Men don’t have jobs…Men, when they’re out of work, tend to become abusive.” Reid made these claims to justify the $15 billion dollar Senate “jobs bill.” Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi included domestic violence as a “pre-existing condition” covered under ObamaCare. “You’ve survived domestic violence, and now you are discriminated [against] in the insurance market because you have a pre-existing medical condition. Well, that will all be gone,” said Pelosi.

Reid’s comments seem like a not so veiled threat. With Nevadans unlikely to return Reid to the United States Senate, Reid will join the unemployed later this year, increasing his tendency “to become abusive.” Reid seems to be saying, “reelect me or I’ll go Neanderthal.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman fears for President Obama. He sees his presidency, after only one short year, transforming into that of a lame duck. “…Instead of making nation-building in America his overarching narrative and then fitting health care, energy, educational reform, infrastructure, competitiveness and deficit reduction under that rubric, the president has pursued each separately. This made each initiative appear to be just some stand-alone liberal obsession to pay off a Democratic constituency…” Whether bundled together under the rubric of “nation-building” or released drop by painful drop – like Chinese water torture – Obama’s initiatives are nothing more than obsessive payoffs to Democratic constituencies. Administration payoffs to ACORN and other fringe groups in the early days of the Obama presidency cemented that perception.

With such perceptions center in the minds of a majority of Americans, Democrats have stalled in passing the centerpiece of the president’s domestic policy, ObamaCare, until after a televised summit later this week with Republican lawmakers. The president and the media need their help. “…The Republican Party has never been more irresponsible,” laments Friedman. “Having helped run the deficit to new heights during the recent Bush years, the G.O.P. is now unwilling to take any responsibility for dealing with it if it involves raising taxes.” As big a spender as compassionate conservative George W. Bush was, his budget deficit before leaving office totaled $410 billion dollars. Obama’s 2009 deficit totaled $1.8 trillion dollars. Obama took the “new heights” of Bush’s deficit to higher orbital heights.

Scared straight by Tea Party fury, Republicans have been strangely unanimous in their refusal to walk the plank for their friends across the legislative aisle. Even Maine’s Olympia Snow doesn’t seem to be making her usual visits to the White House for dinner with Obama. And when was the last time you saw John McCain rush before the cameras to announce his willingness to help the president “get things done for the country?” Democrats are not used to this. If Democrats are going to drive the country over a fiscal cliff, Republicans – at least for now – aren’t willing to take their turn at the wheel.

Friedman fears the old Obama magic has warn so thin with Americans, his honeyed words can no longer move them down the road to self destruction. “I am under no illusion that this alone would solve all his problems…If Obama fails, we all fail.”

This nation has a history of failed presidencies. And in spite of them, the nation goes on. The worlds of Friedman and the rest of the Obama media may end when voters force Obama from the White House in 2012. Then Friedman and all the others will hate us for taking the country back and making it a stunning success, proving we didn’t need Obama after all. For that, they will never forgive us.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

The New York Times photo said it all: there was President Obama, Republican Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor, eyes closed and heads bowed in prayer. The president was meeting with Congressional Republicans in Baltimore to convince them to join Democrats in growing government power beyond the limits of fiscal prudence and at the expense of individual liberty.

“I don’t think the American people want us to focus on our job security,” Obama told the assembled lawmakers. One can only hope the president’s call for Republicans to commit hara-kiri was enough to arouse the most cataleptic Republican attendant.

Obama fondly recalled past support given power-crazed Democrats by such renowned Republican compromisers as Bob Dole and Howard Baker, “that’s not a radical bunch, but if you were to listen to the debate,” the president said of Tea Party opposition to ObamaCare, “you’d think this was some Bolshevik plot.” Obama’s prayer meeting with Republicans is a Hail Mary play to drive a wedge between an impotent Republican leadership and an effective and potent Tea Party. The White House hopes to push Republicans into compromising with Obama’s radical agenda or paint them as “the party of no.” Taking their cue from the president, Republicans should man-up and declare themselves “the party of no to Bolshevik plots.”

By Mr. Curmudgeon

“Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time for something new,” said President Obama in his State of the Union address. “Let’s try common sense. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt. Let’s meet our responsibility to the people who sent us here.” The president, of course, is wrong. The “tired battles” Obama refers to are confrontations that have raged on this continent for over two hundred years – many on real battlefields. The president’s words are an attempt to normalize the abnormal and destructive drive of his party to impoverish our country and thereby destroy our freedoms. His speech was also an attempt to disarm the army of his discontented countrymen who muster to fight the “tired battles” with the president and his party this election year. In this regard, his speech was a failure. The slow death of his health care program is just the first of many battles to come. Alexis de Tocqueville said, “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” The election of Scott Brown was one such repair.

In what must have been music to the Tea Party’s ears the president insisted Congress press ahead with ObamaCare. “As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we’ve proposed.” The anger, Mr. President, will grow stronger as you and your party continues ignoring America’s objection to government-run health care. Many more Americans prefer the status quo to ObamaCare, which was built on a foundation of bribery and back room deals.

Then the president spoke directly to Tea Party conservatives. “From some on the right, I expect we’ll hear a different argument – that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts for wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, and maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away. The problem is, that’s what we did for eight years.” The president’s clumsy attempt to lump Tea Party conservatives together with “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush won’t wash. The formation of the Tea Party was a repudiation of Democrat-Lite “compassionate conservatism.” In fact, many bipartisan Republicans face uphill battles this election year for their complicity in leading the country down its current ruinous path.

Then Obama addressed the disaffected voters of Massachusetts and Scott Brown, the 41st no-vote on ObamaCare. “Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership.” And with this short statement, the president got the heart of the “tired battles” he alluded to earlier in his speech. It is Obama the community organizer’s belief that the coercive power of the state is the great perpetual motion machine of economic and social evolution. Like the great utopians of history, Obama never stops to consider the lives and liberties of those crushed under the weight of that behemoth machine. His utopian definition of “leadership” makes him deaf to the will of the people if it subverts his narrow and dangerous will to power. Just saying no to Martha Coakely in Massachusetts led to Scott Brown saying no to ObamaCare. Saying no to an army of Martha Coakely’s standing for re-election will add a full-throated no chorus to the president’s brand of leadership. In 2012, the hope is that a free people will say no to being organized by saying no to the organizer himself.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

After suffering a stunning defeat to impose government-run health care on the American people, President Bill Clinton quickly changed direction, announcing in his 1996 State of the Union address “the era of big government is over.” Bubba was a realist, which saved his presidency and gained him a second term in office. President Obama, however, is a utopian. The New York Times reports, “When Mr. Obama presents his first State of the Union address on Wednesday evening, aides said he would accept responsibility, though not necessarily blame, for failing to deliver swiftly on some of the changes he promised a year ago. But he will not, aides said, accede to criticism that his priorities are out of step with the nation’s.”

Tonight’s State of the Union address will be entertaining in one important regard: the president will stand before Congress and the nation in an attempt to convince us that we need him more than he needs us. This is sweet music to the ears of the Tea Party.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

With the nation becoming ever more disgusted with our dysfunctional two party system, disaffected Americans became a clenched fist of populist anger. Barack Obama and the Democrats were the first to tap into the rage, unseating a twelve-year Republican majority in Congress and electing a Democratic president who promised a “post partisan” style of governance designed to “unite, not divide” the nation.

Drunk with power and possessing the arrogance of pre-revolutionary French aristocrats, Democrats rewarded their constituents (like ACORN and the United Auto Workers) with taxpayer payoffs and unprecedented multi-trillion dollar stimulus pork. But the totalitarian health care program was the final injury that galvanized populist anger, which found expression in the form of the Tea Party, whose activists voiced their concern and anger at health care town hall meetings across the country. Tea Party activist used anti-ObamaCare anger to coordinate a stunning come-from-behind campaign victory for Republican Scott Brown in bluest of blue states.

The Brown Massachusetts victory rattled King Obama, who finally gazed out the window of his throne room to see an approaching peasant army with pitchforks and catapults. He now views his upcoming State of the Union address as a platform to make a desperate plea to the peasants for mercy and to say he will throw a few federal crumbs to targeted constituencies. According to administration mouthpieces, Obama will use his address to – what else – blame George W. Bush for the economic mess his government can’t fix. This is odd, considering Obama tapped W. to help coordinate relief efforts in earthquake-stricken Haiti. Republicans – the ever-faithful bipartisan dogs – can be counted on to help no matter how often they are kicked.

The Tea Party camp attempts to marshal populist angst in an effort to restrain government power, maximize individual freedom and return a lion’s share of the fruits of our labors to the laborer. The Obama camp, on the other hand, wants to channel populist rage away from the king and his court and focus it on bankers. Never mind that some of Obama’s biggest campaign contributors included: Goldman Sachs, $994,795; Citigroup Inc., $701,290; and Morgan Stanley, $514,881. It was this cynical misdirection of the populist mind that allowed a crooked Chicago huckster into the White House.

The challenge for the Tea Party is to calm that populist anger, focusing it instead into a crusade that appeals, as Abraham Lincoln said, to the “better angels of our nature.” Otherwise, Obama’s Chicago style populism will initiate a gladiatorial spectacle that will have us at each other’s throats.

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Last March, Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito asked President Obama’s Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart a simple question, “Could the government ban political books that contained express advocacy if an incorporated entity was involved?” “Yes,” said Stewart. Alito’s fellow justices blinked hard, leaned forward and asked a few follow up questions. Chief Justice John Roberts asked, “If [a book] has one name, one use of a candidate’s name, it could be covered?” Stewart replied, “That’s correct.” In last week’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court struck down the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, known popularly as McCain Feingold. Media darling and self-described “maverick” John McCain was handed his head for joining Democrats in banning free speech – all in the name of bipartisanship, of course.

But old habits die hard for McCain. Just as it appeared ObamaCare’s death panels were dealt a fatal blow, Sen. McCain is reaching out, yet again, in the spirit of bipartisanship to resuscitate them. “We’d be willing to sit down and start over from the beginning with genuine negotiations,” McCain said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” referring to Obama’s plan to seize the health and wellbeing of every American. “There are things we can agree on.”

Meanwhile, over on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “The president made a decision to go hard left. That’s why he doesn’t have many of my members. If he chooses to govern in the middle, I think he’ll have much broader cooperation from Republicans.” I’ll say one thing for Republicans; no one is better at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Republican bipartisanism will be the death of us yet.

Thank God the Tea Party is working hard to overthrow squishy Republicans in the upcoming primaries. The current Republican leadership may disagree with their Democratic colleagues that the Constitution is a suicide pact, but they seem more than willing to meet them halfway by putting the founding document on a resuscitator. The high court’s McCain-Feingold ruling couldn’t have come at a better time. The upcoming Tea Party political ads will no doubt send a chill up what passes for a spine in McCain and his “reach across the aisle” Republicrats.