Rude Awakening

Well, The Republicans can't say that I didn't tell them so...The members of this present House of Represenatives got elected on the promise that they were going to roll back, repeal if you will the dreaded "Obamacare" Last week , a few of my friends on Facebook and Twitter were upset about the fact that the House voted to repeal it. I told them all not to worry...I even joked about it..I said that my Philadelphia 76ers had a better chance of winning an NBA title than they had of repealing that bill. Presently the facts are baring me out.


You see This whole health-care thing isn't quite working out the way Republicans planned. I personally think that they'll soon try to change the subject (Gay Marriage, Flag Burning, Immigration...The Red Peril!!!)-- but I'm afraid they're already in too deep. Voters remember....Oh who am I kidding?

Last Wednesday's vote to repeal President Obama's health insurance reform law was supposed to be their crowning acheivement. Oh, we heard confident GOP predictions that morale depleted Democrats would defect to their side in droves, generating an unstoppable momentum that would force the Senate to obey "the will of the people" and follow suit. The Democrats' biggest domestic accomplishment would be in tatters and President Obama's political clout and standing would be damaged, perhaps irreparably.

What actually happened, though, is that the Republican majority managed to win the votes of just three Democrats, Just three and all of them were so called" Blue Dogs" who have been consistent opponents of the reform package anyway.(I think in the 1960s, these Blue doggies would have been called Dixiecrats.) In terms of actual defectors, meaning Democrats who changed sides on the issue, there were none. No not one. They call this , momentum?


This unimpressive vote came at a moment when "the will of the people" on health care is coming into sharper focus. Most polls that offer a very simple choice -- Do you like the "Obamacare" law or not ?-- show that the reforms remain narrowly unpopular. Yet a significant fraction of those who are unhappy complain not that the reform law went too far but that it didn't go far enough. I think of these people as the "public option" crowd of which I am one. People in the public option crowd are not people who would have voted republican.

A recent Associated Press poll found that 41 percent of those surveyed opposed the reform law and 40 percent supported it. But when asked what Congress should do, 43 percent said the law should be modified so that it does more to change the health-care system. Another 19 percent said it should be left as it is.

More troubling for the GOP, the AP poll found that just 26 percent of respondents wanted Congress to repeal the reform law completely. A recent Washington Post poll found support for outright repeal at 18 percent; a Marist poll pegged it at 30 percent. In other words, what House Republicans just voted to do may be the will of the Tea Party, but it's certainly not "the will of the people."

It seems to me that all of these freshmen Tea Party represenatives are going to get a rude awakening as to just how the game is played (by both parties in D.C.) The game is rigged...I tried to tell em. Won't just be Glenn Beck crying...House Speaker John Boehner will be crying right about now too!