House Passes Historic Health Bill“Oh what a night,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said moments after the vote, after fielding a congratulatory call from President Barack Obama. “Without President Obama in the White House, this victory would not have been possible. He provided the vision and the momentum for us to get the job done for the American people.” Obama has made health care reform his signature legislative priority — and he put his personal prestige on the line Saturday by traveling to the Capitol to rally Democrats, telling them to “answer the call of history” by passing the bill.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29282.html
Democrats Look Panicky and Careless
Harry Reid can rightly claim to be making history.
If he passes health-care reform, he'll depend on a series of historic "firsts." It'd be the first time Congress had passed a major new entitlement program without bipartisan support; it'd be the first time it passed such a program without popular support; and the first time it passed such a program without knowing or particularly caring what's in it...
This isn't the behavior of a self-confident majority secure in the knowledge that history is on its side. In fact, it's panicked, weasely, and willfully careless. The historian Richard Hofstadter wrote of the "paranoid style" in American politics. Obama Democrats have perfected the "impatient style." Reid's latest exertions fit the pattern of a headlong rush to a slapdash social democracy, justified by whatever arguments happen to be at hand and effected by whatever means necessary...
Reid acts like a hunted man for good reason. The RealClearPolitics average has 53.5 percent opposed to the Democrats' health-care plan and 37.7 favoring it. A CNN poll last week found the public against [the Senate Health Care Bill] by a nearly 2-1 margin... Reid's struggle getting to 60 [votes] makes some liberals fear for their country...
As his approval rating sags below 40 percent back in Nevada, even he might not be returning to Washington after 2010. Every day, every hour matters in the now-or-never calculus of Democrats who already feel their moment slipping agonizingly way.
By Rich Lowry, Editor for National Review, December 15, 2009
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