Conceit on Stilts

Yesterday the president showed defiance on the Obamacare question, although, it must be said, it was an anemic kind of defiance. He said, in a calm and listless sort of way, that Obamacare would not be repealed “as long as [he was] president.” In this, he has, yet again, mistaken the actual position of affairs. The debate is no longer whether the law will be repealed. Rather, we are all wondering how deep the crater is going to be, and how thick the column of smoke will be afterwards.

I keep thinking of another great victory, that time when Napoleon invaded Russia, captured Moscow, and lived in posh surroundings for a considerable number of weeks. What a victory that was! Those were the times!

But let us extend this metaphor a bit, and come up with something to represent health care realities, economic realities, and web site construction realities. Let’s call that cluster of realities something like “Russian winter,” and let us also pretend that the president is (for some reason having to do with the machinations of the Koch brothers) unable to produce an adequate supply line for hundreds of thousands of troops merely by signing an executive order. And we may envision the defeated and humiliated Republicans as pursuing Cossacks, picking off stragglers, and not acting very defeated at all.

Thanks to Mike Lee and Ted Cruz the opposition to Obamacare is now in a position to stand back and do nothing by way of repealing Obamacare. And as far as that law now stands, that is exactly what they should do — nothing. Opponents of the law have established their bona fides, and all they need to do now is say that they saw all this coming, and this is why they were willing to take extreme measures that seemed drastic at the time but now, in retrospect, seem like the pinnacle of modest good sense, not to mention courage. No further attempt should be made in Congress to repeal the law unless and until Obama himself requests it. Either that, or President Biden could ask if Obama resigns in order to write his third autobiography.

In the meantime, no one should begrudge the wide-ranging Cossacks their ongoing activities — lawsuits on the constitutionality of revenue bills that originated in the Senate, lawsuits on illegality of providing subsidies in states that opted out of providing an exchange, lawsuits on the religious liberty issues surrounding abortifacients, and hearings on whether Obama’s unilateral adjustments of key provisions of the law represents something that James Madison would have immediately identified as tyrannical.

In this entire debacle, or perhaps it is a fiasco, or perchance a reality-administered shellacking, smashup, or beatdown, it is this last item that is filled with the most import. Obama has rammed through a law so poorly-conceived and so laden with hubris that it is a law impossible to obey. He has then proceeded, in high profile ways, to disregard it himself while simultaneously demanding that everyone else bow and scrape before it. This will be all the invitation that millions of Americans need to disregard the regulatory rats’ nest, and to begin to shift for themselves. When they do that — chased into it by the conceit on stilts that is Obama — they might well discover that they enjoy what freedom tastes like.

Share on Facebook197Tweet about this on Twitter12Share on Google+1Share on Reddit0Email this to someone

Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, off-topic, or semi-Pelagian.

17 thoughts on “Conceit on Stilts

  1. When will congress wake up and realize this president is usurping it’s powers? He does not have the authority to tax, change taxes, postpone taxes, whatever. Then the American people have to wake up to this festering boil of tax and spend,, no matter how you dress it up or how long you postpone it. Oh, I forgot. We’re all asleep… Sorry, never mind. Hand me another Budweiser.

  2. Didn’t the Heritage Foundation come up with Obamacare?  And what do the Republicans wish to ‘replace’ it with, in order to get health care coverage to the increasing masses of the uninsured?

  3. …and now I am told by my daughter’s Algebra 1 tutor that as a result of the penumbra of rules and regulations emanating from the ACA he will no longer be able to provide his services on the property of our Christian school.  As such, my wife will now need to drive an additional 8 miles for my daughter to meet him in Arby’s in order to receive the same services that were delivered at the school pre-ACA.  It is amazing the rooms this sewer backs up into.

  4. I wouldn’t play the victory song just yet.  The Ds still have 3 things going for them.  One, Obama is still personally popular.  Two, the Republicans are still terrible.  Three, a majority of people think Obamacare can and should be fixed, not abandoned.  

  5. Obamacare will not bring down Obama. Right now Obama IS FDR without a clue.

    FDR had laid waste to the economy with his Keynesian policies and tyrannical regulatory and redistributionist State … save he had the foresight (not to mention the humility to admit his rhetoric wasn’t truly Messianic in bringing about peace) to realize that there was a real threat brewing on the Horizon – the massive Nazi military buildup AND Stalin’s slower duplication of it AND the bonus of fixing some of the economic woes by putting people to work building weapons.

    Few people realize that FDR had starting prepping for WWII around 1937-8. This is something that – due to his Narcissistic belief in the rectitude of his mouth – Obama refuses to do now … when we are facing WWIII with Russia reprising the role of Hitler, the Chinese as Japan, and Iran as Italy … this time with nukes.

    If we are LUCKY (God gives us one more chance), Obama will at least realize that us Crackers are less of a threat than our enemies and put people back to work building F-22′s, missile boats and subs, B-2′s, ICBM’s, and long-range surface to air missiles so we might have a chance to survive what is coming. If not, Obama or whoever is left … will be signing the surrender of the remaining few tens of millions of survivors who are picking thru the remains of nuked cities looking for food.   

  6. Meanwhile, the Jet Ownership system in this country is an atrocious failure, and nobody’s doing anything about it.  The vast majority of us will NEVER own a jet, and the number of un-jetted is only increasing every year.  The system is broken, and it needs to be fixed NOW.  

  7. Yes, the lack of jet ownership is the equivalent of not being able to take your wife or child for medical care.
    What kind of Christians are you people?

  8. I am the kind of Christian that realizes government mandated health care is not in any conceivable way a Christian attribute.  Coercion doth not a Christian make………

  9. Charlie, you are right on jet ownership!  We need more jets and turboprops.
    David, to the best of my knowledge Americans have always had access to a doctor.  Previously people paid with eggs, pumpkins and such but the doc was available.  Right now it appears that we may be headed back to paying with chickens and the like.  By the way, if you have a jet and need to take your family to the doctor, I can fly it for you.

  10. Rob in AK, you say “I am the kind of Christian that realizes government mandated health care is not in any conceivable way a Christian attribute.” I’m assuming that, as a Christian, you volunteer at a local hospital to stop children from dying because their parents are uninsured, and you don’t like the other citizens of the USA (via their government) getting involved in this business. I disagree, but I salute your work. Of course, if I’m wrong, and you’re just sitting on your behind watching poor people die, and complaining because the government wants to stop the show, then I suggest you read Matthew 25.

  11. The problem in our country is that we’ve allowed the cost of medical care to exceed people’s ability to pay for it.  As far as I can tell, no alternative to the government’s plan exists unless people are willing to forgo medical care in many instances.

  12. Somehow, even prior to Obamacare, the USA spent MORE government money on healthcare per capita (and more than double the total money per capita) than many countries where (1) health care is (mostly) free and (2) people are as healthy as the USA or more so. That suggests that the system was already badly broken. See and

Comments are closed.