"Reconciliation is a dodge" and more Monday morning reads

Jennifer Rubin reminds us, once more, with feeling, It's the economy, stupid:

The Democrats have two essential problems on the ObamaCare front. First, they are trying to pass something the public intensely dislikes. Second, they are ignoring the real problem (or making it worse by frightening employers and investors): the economy.

Read the rest.

Jen-Ru's bottom line on Obamacare's chances, especially in light of Sen. Kent Conrad's statement yesterday on Face the Nation: "I have said all year as chairman of the Budget Committee, reconciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform. It won’t work. It won’t work because it was never designed for that kind of significant legislation." Rubin:

Reconciliation has been the buzzword of late, but it is becoming apparent that it’s a dodge intended to keep the hopes of the liberal base alive and to force the House to go first, which then might produce some magic key to unlock health care. But if the Senate budget chair is forcefully calling foul on the process, what then is the point of the House vote? According to Conrad, whatever the House came up with will have to go back and be put through the normal legislative process, subject to the filibuster. [my emphasis] . . . .

The end of ObamaCare isn’t here yet, but we’re getting close as the artifices fall one by one and the chattering class comes to suspect there simply isn’t any way for largely ineffective Democratic leaders to get a monstrous, hugely unpopular bill through both houses. And this, they will tell us, is a great sign of failure and of gridlock. Well, perhaps it’s simply the long-overdue triumph of popular will over elected representatives.

Power to the people. See Bill Kristol for your marching orders:

[The Republicans] need to stay on the offensive, overcoming their natural stolid conservatism. They need to welcome upstart candidates and unorthodox political strategies. They need to be open to new formulations of issues. In the pages of newspapers and magazines, conservatives have begun to lay out sensible and appropriately modest (as befits a congressional-year election) policy proposals that contrast with the Democrats’. This needs to be pushed ahead, steadily and relentlessly, through November 2010.

Do read the rest of this. I wanted to paste in the whole thing but that would be wrong.

Moving on. RS McCain on Frank Rich's ka-ray-zee NYT column:

Conservatives could play the "look between the lines" game and cite this video as evidence that Frank Schaeffer is nutty as a fruitcake, but no matter how many kooks are attracted to liberalism -- remember Peggy Joseph, who declared that Obama would pay her mortgage and put gas in her car? -- liberals never see these kooks as representative of their own ideology.

Complete piece here.

John Hinderaker at Power Line on same, pointing out a rather significant fact:

Stack's essay is left-wing, not right-wing; it ends with a denunciation of capitalism and a quote from the Communist Manifesto. The Tea Party is a highly diverse movement, but you will find very few Communists in it.

He dismantles Rich's piece and just has to ask:

Would any newspaper other than the New York Times publish anything this dumb?

And they continue to publish the pro-totalitarian musings of Thomas Friedman, too, who -- guess what? -- thinks Lindsey Graham is a great example for all Republicans. Commentary on that here.

Victor Davis Hanson takes note of Obama fatigue. We agree. Try to find three people on your street who would willingly sit through two minutes of this. There's no audience for the style or the content.

This just in from the climate change brain trust: Weather changes from year to year. Who knew?

Lastly, Why, Mr. President, Why? Obama does for the US hockey team what he does for Dem candidates.


Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)
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