George Rebane
My email this morning contained an “open letter” by local resident Michael Anderson to the Tea Party Patriot leadership. It was published in Jeff Pelline’s blog and sent to me by the ‘duty reader’ of Jeff’s output. Michael excoriates the policies and efforts of the TPP and the Republicans in Congress to roll back Obamacare. Throughout his piece Michael asserts to the TPP leadership that “You lose by default”, although it is not clear, at least to me, what such a default might be.
In reading Michael’s well written apology for the latest leftwing attempt at nationalized healthcare, his arguments stood out as those we have heard for the last two years or more from that side of the aisle. Nevertheless, I believe that the points Michael presents are the best that the left can muster, and has no alternative but to reiterate endlessly. His letter is consistent even to the level of not recognizing ANY of the considered conservative responses and/or alternatives to adopting the path that the Europeans are now attempting to travel in the other direction, this as the unsustainability of their socialized medicine schemes becomes clear to even their most dedicated ideologues.
In the aftermath of the federal district court ruling on Obamacare, Michael’s outpouring is another crie de couer of the progressives in the land. Considering where this monotone mantra appeared, its purpose is really to reconstitute and rally the left to continue their push toward socialized medicine. The effort is difficult given how this partisan monstrosity was given birth in the dead of night against historically widespread opposition across the land.
Below is Michael’s italicized letter annotated with my comments in square brackets.
Dear Nevada County Tea Party Patriot leaders,
I realize that these early rulings are exciting, but the end game is with the Supreme Court. If the Supremes do the right thing, they will rule that the Commerce Clause and precedent rulings for “trade that was in the national interest” will win the day. [There is no evidence from either the fiscal or healthcare perspectives that Obamacare is in the national interest. Cato Institute’s ‘Bad Medicine – A Guide to the Real Costs and Consequences of the New Health Care Law’ by Michael Tanner is one of many rigorous analyses outlining the details of this disaster.]
You lose by default.
It is very distressing to me that so much of your effort is stuck in overturning this bill, “Obamacare” as you call it. Presidents going back to FDR recognized that first world nations were trying to come to grips with health care policy, each nation trying to find the best way to deliver exemplary care at the most reasonable cost. [And none of them has yet to find a sustainable solution which has become clear as government after government runs out of money. We already borrow 40% of every dollar we spend.] Our hodge-podge model has become increasingly dysfunctional over the past 4 decades, and now we are at a crisis stage. [Our healthcare system is only one of many areas of commerce our encroaching government has made hodge-podge. The solution is to make it simpler, not cobble more bureaucracy on top of what now struggles under the heavy hand of government.]
Only the Democratic Party has made feeble attempts to fix this broken system (excepting Bush II’s Medicare bill, which actually just served to balloon the national debt). [Bush’s attempt is another entitlement that “just” balloons national debt as do SS and Medicaid. If that’s all it does, ‘just’ try to remove it.] The conservatives, the Republicans, the play-it-safers, otherwise did almost nothing. Democrats tried a number of times to reform the system, with nothing to show for it but wounds and bruises. Finally, at an extreme political cost, the Democratic Party and President Obama passed a health care bill in 2010 that is actually more conservative than what President Nixon first proposed! How weird is that? [Not sure what comparing one progressive’s failed attempt to another progressive’s success does to support the Obamacare argument here.]
You lose by default.
For those of us who have actually been keeping score, we are not really very interested in hearing what you have to say on this issue any more. [That has been abundantly clear from the very beginning, and gives visible lie to the ingenuous kumbayah invitations heard lately.] Maybe in a decade or so, your voice will gain some traction once again. [Thank you, that decade started last November.] One way you could re-engage with the national dialogue is to actually work to improve “Obamacare” and make it a better bill as time goes on. [According to all polls, opposition to Obamacare has made dialogue out of the autocratic monologue that ushered it in.] That’s actually why it was written to be improved over time, getting rid of of the stuff that doesn’t work and implementing what does work. But if your only goal is to go back to what we had before, [Arguing that the 2K+ page bill that no legislator has read was “written to be improved” is beyond comprehension. The bill is so unrealistic and fiscally toxic that to date over 700 ‘friends of Obama’ organizations have been excused from its implementation, and thousands more appeals are rolling in monthly. And weekly we hear of more expensive and job killing tangles discovered as people on both sides of the aisle are taking the time to study that hernia pack.]
You lose by default.
One thing you may not be paying enough attention to is that politically, you are in the weeds. Your Tea Party Patriot demographic absolutely cannot support a so-called Forty Year Plan. It just isn’t going to work. Generation Y is the most liberal generation since the Great Depression, and you have an extremely small percentage of their numbers that you can count as Tea Party Patriots. [Given the usual static picture of the world that is so accessible to progressives, this statement is true. Fortunately, over time and with more information things change as we are now seeing in Europe. The only thing the left has on its side, and it is considerable, are the legions of socially and economically propagandized students with no sellable skills that government monopoly schools have ‘graduated’ since the Great Society. Today we have a workforce that is marginally able to compete on world markets. State protectionism and its inevitable costs are all that the left can offer to a growing cadre of jobless who can only hope for more redistribution.]
I realize this message will not be received with the most open of arms, and I offer it only in the hopes that you will realize that you are working at cross purposes to your own stated goal. Repealing “Obamacare” will actually land all of us in a healthcare world that is worse than when President Obama was inaugurated. [An appropriate ending to this appeal with earplugs firmly in place. No one in the tea party movement or on the conservative side has proposed to just repeal Obamacare, the better alternatives to which are legion. True dialogue on American healthcare reform will not start until the left gets beyond this simplistic and erroneous view of the more beneficial alternatives that are available to us as a nation.]
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