Conservatives are all shouting delighted fiascos at the pathetic debut of Obamacare. Like the chaps at La Scala we take equal delight in an utter fiasco as in a glorious trionfo.
But I do not feel any lift from the disaster.
It is, after all, ordinary American women that are getting sold down the river by the fundamental transformations of President Obama. This is not right. This is America and we honor our women.
Health care is a girl thing; you can tell that by the "care" in health care, and the debacle of Obamacare hits women right where they live. It can't be funny that all the careful plans of our womenfolk are being dashed to the ground by the transformative folly of our first black president.
President Obama made at least five specific promises about Obamacare, and women live by the promises of the men they trust. But all five promises turned out to be cynical lies. Here they are, courtesy of Christopher J. Conover at the Weekly Standard:
• Deception #1: Universal coverage
• Deception #2: No new taxes on the middle class
• Deception #3: Annual premium savings of $2,500
• Deception #4: No increase in the deficit
• Deception #5: You can keep your plan if you like it
Looking at the promises in the cold light of day it seems obvious why candidate and president Obama had to make them. Without those promises ObamaCare would have died in the womb. That's because, as Conover writes, while Americans are all in favor of "universal health insurance" in the abstract, they just aren't willing to reach into their pockets and pay for it.
In short, pursuit of universal health care was either a fool's errand (from a political standpoint) or would require the wool to be pulled over the eyes of the American public.
In Barack Obama, reformers found a candidate willing and able to rise to the occasion.
In most American politicians there exists tucked away in a secret corner of their hearts a grudging commitment to truth, justice, and the American Way that prevents them from committing the mega-deception that the selling of ObamaCare required. But Barack Obama, leftist and anti-colonialist, was willing to do it, was wanting to do it, was waiting to do it.
The question, of course, is what happens now? Is the sinking of the SS Obamic going to echo down the decades as the political disaster of the century that changed U.S. politics forever? Or will it turn out just to be the "glitch" that our MSM masters want us to believe?
The answer lies in the hearts of the women betrayed by Obama, the women whose carefully considered health-care arrangements have been busted up, the kind of women telling their health-plan cancellation stories in this post at the Matt Walsh Blog. Will they call the wayward president to account for his lies, or will they submit to his patriarchal power as women have done down the ages, from hapless Briseis to the wily Scheherazade to the famous feminist that Jean-Paul Sartre existentially treated like a doormat: Simone de Beauvoir?
Forget about our brave conservative women. Don't worry about the "Julias." It's ordinary middle-class women that I'm wondering about, the non-political women that just want their families to have a good health plan, one that they like and one that they can keep.
So what happens next? Do Republicans learn to message and trot out the sobbing mothers of autistic children that had their premiums tripled and their deductibles doubled? Does it all end up as a Republican Congress in 2014 and a Republican president in 2016?
Maybe. But think back to 2008 and the TARP bailout and the Obamic fundamental transformation: they provoked tens of thousands of women to start the Tea Party. Keli Carender was one of the first right here in Seattle. Now, of course, she's graduated into the semi-establishment Tea Party Patriots.
Suppose that right now, all across the nation, there are Healthcare Moms starting to talk to their friends about their canceled health plans. Suppose by next month they are starting to do something about it. Suppose by next spring they are starting to get active in Republican Party races.
The Republican Party doesn't operate by top-down messaging like the Democratic Party. It gets taken over every decade or so by some bottom-up groundswell. That's because the Republican Party is the party of the People of the Responsible Self. Responsible people don't wait for the ruling class to get around to sending a community organizer down to their neighborhood.
When they get sold down the river responsible people figure it's their job to start paddling and make a difference. Especially the women.
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