Today is the two year anniversary of the passage of ObamaCare. Note that Republicans are marking the anniversary of Obama’s signature achievement, while the White House is not. Even Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer admits that it’s an electoral liability for Democrats.
That might have something to do with its stupendous unpopularity, not only among Republicans, but also among Democrats. Obama says that’s because of attack ads against it. Charles Krauthammer says that’s bunk:
There’s a widespread understanding that ObamaCare isn’t good for anyone, especially young people, and it’s a budgetary disaster.
And next week the Supreme Court will hear arguments on its constitutionality. Many are suggesting that a decision in ObamaCare’s favor will actually damage Obama’s reelection chances.
It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. Liberals thought ObamaCare would get more popular after passage. Instead, it was one of the biggest factors in the historic wipe-out Democratic House members experienced in 2010.
More specifically, eight out of the eleven “Stupak Block Flippers” (i.e., the theoretically staunch pro-life Democrats who swore up and down they would never, ever, ever vote for ObamaCare if it included taxpayer funding for abortion, right up until they voted for taxpayer-funded abortion) went down in electoral defeat. At the time, the insistence for public funding for abortion seemed like a tactical error on the part of liberals. After all, why bother with that tiny sop to feminists when you’re busy nationalizing one-sixth of the economy?
But since then, the fervor with which Democrats have pursued imposing this mandate on Catholics (part and parcel of their contempt for religion), their white hot fury at Rush Limbaugh’s (admittedly foolish) remarks, and the continuing overheated, drama queen “war on women” rhetoric coming from the left side of the blogsphere suggests that yes, that was what ObamaCare was really about, and they’re willing to remain a permanent political minority to maintain it.
So be it. If forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions is the hill they want to die on*, I suppose we should let them. (Though not at the cost of failing to mention Obama’s failure on the economy, on creating the conditions for private industry to create jobs, Fast & Furious, or his naked cronyism.) As Mickey Kaus has noted, this issue is a serious political loser for Obama, and we should keep hammering away on it, not despite the shrieks of outrage from liberalism’s feminist amen corner, but because of them.
*”Violent, eliminationist” military metaphor offered up as free rhetorical bonus!