A case in point is the apparent effort by Senate Democrats to prevent future Congresses from pulling the plug on the noxious death panels … er … the Medicare Advisory Board, without a super-duper majority vote. Sen. Jim DeMint has pointed out that through a mere rule change, the Senate Democrats are trying to impose a 67-vote requirement, which will be nearly impossible to achieve, of course, to knock out the panels in a future Congress. So if for example the controversial mammogram guideline is enacted by the Medicare Advisory Board along with other “effectiveness” measures, there will be little a future Congress can do about it.Suffice it to say it's damning evidence of the truth of Mark Steyn's contention that the Democrats understand very well they face a wipe-out next election cycle, but don't care, because they will have achieved their strategic aim of turning the US into a European-style socialist state. They are gambling that the rubicon can't be un-crossed.
Charles Kesler says it can, however, but it will take determined resistance of the kind I don't see the GOP capable of at present. Most of the GOP wants to try the fix-it later strategy, which Kesler rightly sees is mere raising of the white flag:
To acquiesce in the new program in hopes of improving it later on would be a pipedream. If entitlement programs could be easily fixed, the U.S. would not after decades of warnings be facing the impending bankruptcy of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If government bureaucracies could handily be streamlined, the Post Office would not be...the Post Office.Better plan:
refusing to accept the new measure as legitimate, or in other words, beginning to work as soon as it is passed for its repeal. There is nothing un-American or undemocratic or even unrealistic about this. The same legislature that enacts a bill has the right and power to repeal it. It happens all the time. More generally, battles to reverse public policy considered unfair, unwise, and unconstitutional are a storied part of American history, ranging from Thomas Jefferson's denunciations of the Alien and Sedition Acts, to Andrew Jackson's war against the Second Bank of the United States, to the repeal of the 18th Amendment, when a thirsty country changed its mind about banning sales of alcoholic beverages. More recently, the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 lasted until 1989, when Congress, under pressure from senior citizens, removed it from the books.Bill Kristol offers the slightest glimmer of hope that the whole vote could still fail.
Maybe Sen. DeMint will prove the Harry Reid's various deals aren't legal; even if he doesn't, I say "bring it on," because that means the whole thing is subject to overturn in the Supreme Court.
Otherwise, rest up this Christmas. Come January: the fight. Harry Reid's going to try to make the United States commit suicide on Christmas Eve, but as President Washington said the other day:
We must never despair; our situation has been compromising before, and it changed for the better; so I trust it will again. If difficulties arise, we must put forth new exertion and proportion our efforts to the exigencies of the times.The Obama administration is going to be the high-water mark of progressivism in this country, not the end of its liberty.
Update: regarding the Steyn thesis, Mr. W. observes that the reason the GOP hasn't done anything "strategic" as Steyn says, is because until now the fight has been to prevent passage of the bill: this fight carried on by a very weak (numerically) party. The moment the bill passes, then the fight becomes repeal.
Furthermore, no repeal is going to be possible without electoral victory --because Obama is not going to sign a bill for repeal, and it would take a supermajority to override a veto. So these things are not either/or matters.
Update 2: Hadley Arkes is hopeful. God bless Tony Blankley for his realistic optimism: "Yet, Freedom!".
