OBAMACARE BY SOCIALIST PUTSCH

Why are House Democrats so suicidally focused on pushing through an unpopular bill? Because they believe that the Republicans will never be able to repeal it and that they will have established a permanent new government entitlement that will only grow in future decades, pushing this country permanently farther toward the left.

Mark Steyn makes this point and also concludes that the Democrats are probably right—that the history of the Republicans' response to the welfare state indicates that they don't have the backbone to roll it back.

But there is something different about this bill. Previous welfare-state expansions enjoyed public support and passed with bipartisan majorities—which served to demoralize any opposition. Never has a bill like this gone through on a strict one-party vote when the American people oppose it by nearly two to one. And that means that there is no reason for the Republicans to accept this bill.

And that's why a pledge to repeal the bill is gaining momentum, with 37 House and Senate members on board—including a number of rising stars in the party. Even more telling is the fact that 163 Republican congressional candidates have signed it.

Below, Charles Krauthammer gets close to capturing an important aspect of why the kind of partisan maneuver now being used by the Democrats is prone to fail—and must not be allowed to stand. Government actions enjoy a sense of moral legitimacy when they eventually gain the acquiescence of leaders from both parties.

That is what produces the sense that there has been an in-depth national debate on a subject, and one side had the more convincing argument. More broadly, it produces the sense that our leaders are listening to the people and acting with "the consent of the governed." And that legitimacy is what the Democrats are throwing out by trying to push this bill through without the consent of the governed.

"In Praise of the Rotation of Power," Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, March 12

As the Afghanistan war intensifies—Marja, soon Kandahar, and the steady arrival of 30,000 new American troops—it has come to be seen as Obama's war.

Not so. It's become America's war. When the former opposition party—habitually antiwar for the past four decades—adopts, reaffirms and escalates a war begun by the habitually hawkish other party, partisanship falls away, and the war becomes nationalized.

And legitimized….

The lack of opposition is not a matter of hypocrisy. It is a natural result of the rotation of power. When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That's its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, the party adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born.

The rotation of power is the finest political instrument ever invented for the consolidation of what were once radical and deeply divisive policies.

[F]or all the hand-wringing about broken government, partisanship, divisiveness and gridlock, it's hard to recall a more informed, more detailed, more serious, more prolonged national debate than on health-care reform.



Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of "The Intellectual Activist (TIA)" and contributor to "The Freedom Fighter's Journal."