Tour de Force

The GOP has taken its leadership position in the Senate, and for the first time in six years, bills will be voted on in meaningful numbers, the opposition (the Dems) will be allowed to add amendments (even though the GOP was barred from this activity under the dictatorial rule of Harry Reid,) and legislation will come to Barack Obama's desk.

The president maintains his combative stance, suggesting that he has a veto pen and he will use it. That fine. It's what the constitution mandates, and it is his right. It will also make him the "obstructionist."

The legislation that is bound to reach the president's desk will include modifications to Obamacare—the Democrat's disastrous attempt to improve health care in the United States. By virtually every measure (including national polling), Obamacare is already an expensive, ineffective failure. But no matter, Obama defends it as if it were a human right to lose your doctor, lose your existing insurance policy, pay more for basic coverage, have your employer cut your working hours (to avoid participation), and be coerced into participation.

As an aside, it was truly amusing to see the Faculty at Harvard—who were staunch defenders of the ACA legislation, complain that the university modified their medical insurance to put it more in line with Obamacare mandates. After all, the mandates are for the little people, not the blue state elites.

George Will (as reported in Downtrend.com) comments on Barack Obama's signature defense strategy for Obamacare as exemplified in a speech yesterday:

“On one thing, the president said is quite right: The Democrats ought to say the Affordable Care Act is what we are ... Continent-wide imposed from Washington top-down reform that involves a tapestry of taxes, mandates and other coercions.

“[H]is performance today had the four basic Obama rhetorical tropes. First you attack a straw man. Republicans said no one would sign up. Of course no Republican ever said any such thing. Then you declare the debate over. The debate on climate change is over, the debate on universal preschool is over, everyone be quiet ...

“Then he says it’s working ... It’s hard to know what that means because the ethanol program which subtracts from the public good in a variety of ways is working in the sense it’s being implemented in the law. Sugar import quotas, the same thing, it’s working but is not good for everybody.

"And finally, there’s his standard there can be no honorable and intelligent disagreement with me. States that have not expanded Medicaid are doing it out of spite because of him, because he says it will not cost them a dime. It won’t cost them a dime for three years. After that it will cost them a mountain of dimes. So it’s a basic tour de force of Obama rhetoric.”

The structure of this president's mendacious attempt to deflect criticism has become so predictable it is, in its own way, laughable. With all due respect to George Will, I'm not sure tour de force and Barack Obama should be used in the same sentence.