Rich Lowry has it right in this observation of the Democrats’ “victory” in moving health care to the Senate for debate:
They’ve talked themselves into the ludicrously self-delusional notion that what ails them and the president is that they haven’t yet passed the hundreds of billions of dollars of tax hikes and Medicare cuts that finance (albeit incompletely) ObamaCare. …
If they pass it, they have tax hikes and Medicare cuts around their necks, as well as the increased insurance premiums the bill is sure to cause. If they fail, they’ve demonstrated their own ineffectual ideological fervor, while still putting themselves on record in favor of tax increases and Medicare cuts.
Like many of us, Lowry wonders why the Democrats don’t abandon the “maximalist” big-government power grab and take up instead a health-care bill that might be popular and obtain bipartisan support. The answer it seems is that the leadership of the Democratic party — Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the president — is ideologically committed to doing this, to reworking health care “permanently” (or so the president imagines). The leadership doesn’t care if it has to sacrifice dozens of House members and some Red State senators along the way. It has grown indifferent to criticism (besides, it’s all the doing of Fox News, talk radio, and insurance companies, right?) and contemptuous of ordinary voters whom it imagines will learn to live with whatever is served up. And frankly, the Democrats haven’t done anything else of note (cap-and-trade, financial reform, and card check are all stalled), so this is it — their claim to fame. As for Obama, he has three years to restore his standing and find other reasons (a revived economy, perhaps) to gain voters’ support.
Well that explains why the Democratic leadership is in thrall to a monstrous health-care bill, but why are the moderates and conservatives in their party following them? Some of the explanation rests in payoffs. (“Landrieu bragged about her swag, calculating that the ‘Lousiana Purchase’ was really worth $300 million.”) Part of it rests in the pressure members always feel from their own leaders and the true believers in their own base. And part of the explanation certainly is arrogance: they think they can get away with it. They imagine that they are so popular or clever that they — unlike the lawmakers sitting next to them — can evade the wrath of the voters.
Lawmakers will now head home and hear from their constituents. Many will be unmoved by what they hear. But some may begin to wonder why it is they are doing something so monstrously irresponsible from a fiscal standpoint and so suicidal from a political one. And then the fun will start — the mad scramble of lawmakers wise enough to know they need to get off the ObamaCare train.
The fate of ObamaCare will boil down to whether there are enough Democrats left on board willing to sacrifice their own careers to gratify the leftist aspirations and egos of their leaders. It’ll be a close call.