Noemie Emery smartly observes that the passage of ObamaCare has revealed a gulf between the public and its elected leaders:
If this has the sense of a civic rebellion, it is one, and for a good reason: The members of Congress who passed the bill are the constitutionally and legitimately elected representatives of the voters in question, but, at least in this instance, they are legislating consciously and defiantly against those voters’ will. … There is a disconnect here between Congress and voters that is causing the system to buckle in places, as voters maneuver and struggle to make themselves heard. Passage increased the debate and the anger, instead of resolving them. They won’t be resolved very soon.
As she points out, we’ve had a series of “throw the bums out” elections, in which voters upset about a mismanaged war or corruption or a financial meltdown replaced the crew they held responsible for our travails. Those replacements, however, have only further enraged the electorate by doing precisely what the voters have been pleading with them not to do — create a massive new entitlement that will only add to our crippling debt. “So the voters have taxation with misrepresentation, and discontent and the anger roll on.”
The solution, only a partial one in an off presidential election year, will come this November when conservatives and independents can sweep out all the lawmakers who stubbornly defied them. It is a first step, but only a first step. The debate and the wave will not subside until 2012, when the voters will have their chance to rip up ObamaCare before it takes root.
Obama said he’d be content to be a one-term president, and he may well be if the Republicans find an attractive and competent standard bearer to replace him. What Obama perhaps did not count on was the consequence of such a repudiation: the obliteration of the target of their anger, ObamaCare.