"Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon. Must try to look on the bright side." Mark Steyn commenting at NRO on the consequences of passing Obamacare.
The bright side, if you can call it that, is that Americans got what they voted for in the last two elections. In choosing to reward Democrats with power we declared ourselves eager for higher taxes, higher spending, greater debt, bloated bureaucracy, a corrupt political process, and a weaker military. This is, of course, what the Democrat party has stood for ever since the sixties, but they've never had enough political clout to put their most radical ideas into practice. Now they do, and, unless the most recent incarnation of those ideas, Obamacare, is repealed, we'll be paying for it for the rest of our lives.
There've been lots of predictions over the last several weeks of a massive defeat of Democrats in the next two election cycles, given the ugly manner in which they passed an enormously unpopular bill. The party leadership demanded that the rank and file fall on their political swords for the sake of the cause, and many of them dutifully obliged. The voters, we've been assured, will hold them accountable:
Even so, I'm not so sure. A lot can happen in the next two years that may cause hostility toward the Democrats to wane. Here's my prediction, for the little that it's worth: If the economy turns around the Democrats will weather this current storm and their losses in November and in 2012 won't be quite as severe as they're being projected to be. If the economy doesn't improve, however, then resentments over Obamacare will exacerbate the electorate's distaste for Democrat policies, and the party will suffer major losses at the polls, especially this Fall.
In the meantime I think the town hall meetings will afford great entertainment this summer.
RLC