Dividing America

President Clinton's response to the Monica Lewinsky affair in early 1998 was to get Dick Morris to conduct a poll, the Washington Post reported.

When Morris reported that Americans would favor his impeachment or resignation if he lied under oath, he says Clinton replied: "Well, we'll just have to win, then."

That started the highly partisan conflict with the Republican Congress that ended in Clinton's impeachment in the House and trial in the US Senate. Arguably, it started the 50-50 Red-state/Blue state division that has dominated US politics down to the present.

The divide certainly hasn't really helped Republicans. But the rage against Bush certainly helped Democrats win in 2006 and 2008.

Now the Obama administration, with its popularity waning, has decided to take a highly partisan tone with its opponents. It has decided to argue that FoxNews is not a real news network, but an arm of the Republican Party.

Well, FoxNews certainly features a number of conservative commentators. And it certainly does feature news that is embarrassing to the administration. But the combative Obama response, David Limbaugh writes, is troubling.

Instead of selling its agenda the old-fashioned way -- by convincing the unconvinced -- it attacks those who dare to articulate and air the opposing point of view.

You can understand why the frustrated Obamites might think they need to up the ante on their opponents. They are political fighters and political fighting is what they do. But viewing this long term, it can do nothing but hurt their cause.

Let's count the ways that this will hurt the administration:

1. It will elevate FoxNews as the official opposition to Obama.
   
2. It will encourage anyone that has a beef with the administration to watch FoxNews.
3. It will encourage fence-sitters to take a look at FoxNews to find out what is going on.
4. It will energize the opposition.
5. It will lead to more and more political thuggery as the Obama administration tries harder and harder to gain traction.

There's a reason why political tradition requires that the political parties bury the hatchet after an election. It is that government becomes almost impossible when everyone is all mobilized to fight on every single issue. That's why politicians typically try to pass legislation that has a large bipartisan majority. If you pass something on strictly a partisan basis, then the other side will mobilize to reverse it at the first opportunity,

Let's look at the Bush tax cuts to see how this works. In the 2001-02 recession the Bush administration wanted to cut tax rates to stimulate economic recovery. But Democrats were opposed. It was impossible to obtain a bipartisan consensus.

So, to get the economy moving and to win the next election, the Bushies pushed their tax cuts through on a partisan budget vote, needing only 51 votes in the Senate instead of a filibuster-proof 60 votes. The tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2010. Democrats have been salivating ever since to get at the revenue that the tax cuts for the rich took away.

But when President Bush wanted to reform Social Security he understood that budget shenanigans were inappropriate. He needed a bipartisan majority. Democrats were opposed to his plan and it was clear that a bipartisan majority wasn't possible. So Bush accepted defeat, and Social Security didn't get reformed,

The Obama administration clearly doesn't believe in that sort of politics. They seem to be intent upon a huge change to health care without creating a national consensus and a bipartisan majority in Congress. They seem to be determined to get something, anything, as long as they win.

This is a strategic error of monumental proportions. Nothing but tears will come of a close-fought partisan victory on health care.

The problem facing the Obama administration is not that FoxNews is an arm of the Republican Party (Thank goodness it isn't!) . The problem is that Obama campaigned as a moderate and he is governing as a liberal. The problem is that his program is broadly unpopular with the American people, and the more they learn about his agenda, the less they like it.

As I said. The Obama administration is just creating trouble for itself. How much, nobody can tell. That's why we have federal elections every two years.

TSA is the New DMV

Critics of the president's health care plan like to ask whether you want your health care run by the Department of Motor Vehicles.

We all know why. The Department of Motor Vehicles is the only government agency that most people ever interface with as a customer. It's the only time they get ordered around by rude, uneducated, overweight dolts. And these are dolts that cannot be fired. It's the only time when they experience the eternal constant of governance: How not to do it.

On Sunday, Lady Marjorie encountered the new DMV, the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) the creation of 9/11. Marjorie was selected for a random search. This meant being ordered into a glass cage, barked at, ordered out of the glass cage, having her belongings spilled on the floor, being ordered around, and generally treated as though she was applying for a drivers license at the DMV.

You'll recall that on the insistence of Democrats in the Senate, airport security checks were to be performed by uniformed government employees rather than the contract personnel, as previously. They must have thought that they had scored a real coup by creating a new special interest that would be good for votes and contributions in the years ahead.

But I think they may have made a strategic mistake. It used to be that Americans didn't come into contact with the federal government too much, except to talk to the friendly ranger at a National Park. But now they have to suffer the ministrations of a new Circumlocution Office, well practiced in the arts of How not to do it, every time that they fly.

At least you only have to deal with the DMV once every five years.

I admit it. I hate the security checks at the airport, absolutely hate them. It is just wrong for a free people to be subject to such routine policing and manhandling by the government. As time goes by, I expect that I will project my distaste more and more upon the unfortunate TSA employees manning the security checkpoint.

I expect that many Americans will come to feel the same. Democrats will find out that there will be political repercussions to this.

It will mean that critics of glorious new government progams will ask, in future: Do you really want your health care run by the TSA?

It's Not the Lies, It's the Meanness

Hey, Rush Limbaugh is a public figure, right? He signed on for the big leagues, so you can figure that he'd better be man enough to take the hits. So if the boys get a bit rough with him about a fake racist comment, well, politics ain't beanbag.

Actually, Limbaugh can take the heat, including the snide little hit from the Today Show infobabe, asking him why the private Rush is so gentle and polite. Compared to the public Rush.

Hey, anyone can fabricate racist quotes from the IP of a New York law firm, as suggested in The American Thinker. Anyone can sicc the Justice Brothers, Reverends Jackson and Sharpton, on Rush. Anyone can gin up the head of the NFL players union, DeMaurice Smith, who "served as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder and was a member of Barack Obama’s transition team," according to The American Thinker to say that the NFL players would play for a team with Rush as an owner.

But it's the meanness that gets to me. Rush Limbaugh had the chance to own a share in an NFL team, probably the one thing that this modest man would like in all the world.

And the Obama political machine decided to take him down on it. Because they could.

Here's my advice to the Obama guys. If I were you, I'd keep my eye on the ball. I reckon you chaps have about three months to reverse your economic policy, and reverse your legislative agenda. After that, it's pretty well baked in the pie that we'll have big unemployment going right through till the 2012 election. It's pretty well baked in that we'll have serious inflation. It's pretty well baked in that the American people are going to be mad as hell and are going to want to take it out on Democrats at every opportunity.

Sooner or later you chaps are going to have to start cutting spending and lowering taxes on job-creating businesses.

So these Chicago politics power plays aren't going to move anyone. In fact, they will disgust the white moderate women without whose votes Democrats don't have a prayer of winning anything.

It's not the lies. It's the meanness.

We Need Rules for Race-Hustlers

Well, now we know. When it comes to ownership in the National Football League, outspoken conservatives need not apply. But it is OK for an outspoken and divisive liberal like Keith Olbermann to be an NFL broadcaster. That's different.

For Rush Limbaugh to belong to a syndicate aiming to buy a majority interest in the St. Louis Rams is beyond the pale. That's because, you see, according to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, reported in the Washington Post he is too divisive:

"I've said many times before we're all held to a high standard here, and I think divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about," Goodell said at an NFL owners' meeting.

What was the problem? Just some made up racist quotes dredged up from Wikipedia and retailed by people like St. Louis Post Dispatch sportswriter Bryan Burwell.

You know what I think. I think it is time to establish some rules for race-baiters, particularly journalists operating in the mainstream media. If you don't follow these rules then your statements make you liable under the rules of libel: having a reckless disregard for the truth.

1. A charge of racism is the most serious charge you can make against an American.
2. A charge of racism must be supported by a primary source.
3. A primary source is a video, an audio, a transcript, s sworn statement.
4. A primary source is not Wikipedia, Wikiquote, a blogger, or an unsourced quote in a book.

If you haven't met these rules then you must expect to pay damages for your reckless speech.

Then there is the NFL. I think the NFL needs to understand that 40 percent of Americans are conservative, and that the NFL needs to keep friends in both political parties if it expects to maintain its anti-trust privileges as a national institution. It may be that the NFL needs a sharp blow upside the head before it "gets it."

The Gasping Strangled Death of a Lie

Don't say you weren't warned. What we are witnessing this Fall, as Democrats flail away trying to create a bill out of the morass of lies they call health care reform, is a watershed moment, a tipping point.

It is more than the death of an ill-thought legislative measure, an attempt to conjure up an image of low-cost universal health care with makeup, lighting, and a winning stage presence in the leading man. It is the end of an era. It is the end of the pretense that you can satisfy the basic wants and needs of humans with a bureaucratic government program.

Let us just look at just one of the crazed ideas in the Baucus bill. It is the luxury tax on excessively generous insurance plans. Notice what is going on here. First of all, government encourages the luxuriant growth of health insurance by making it into a tax-free employee benefit. The whole thing started, you will recall, in World War II as a way of evading war-time wage and price controls.

So now, in order to deal with the inevitable effect of such a subsidy, the solons propose to set up a penalty to stop health insurance from getting too luxuriant!

This sort of thing is so commonplace in the modern social democratic world that we even have a law to explain it: the law of unintended consequences.

But the whole thing is madness anyway, as Tony Blankley explains.

[T]he same Congress and president who want to stop the banks from taking too much risk cannot stop themselves from ever more deficits. Indeed, so intoxicated -- nay, hypnotized! -- by debt is the current government that it is not even proposing to try to cut back.

Yes! Even before the Baucus bill the Congressional Budget Office reports that "The federal budget is on an unsustainable path[.]" Why is that? Because "Rising costs for health care and the aging of the U.S. population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly."

Does President Obama propose a radical program of bringing the federal budget back to reality? No. He proposes to double down.

The ideology of the progressive educated class has always been a lie. It was a lie when Marx proposed the "immiseration" of the working class. It was a lie when the Prussians enacted the social insurance model that paid for the workers' social benefits out of the hide of the middle class. It was a lie when FDR enacted the cruel Wagner Act that cartelized Big Labor and Big Business. It was a lie when he passed Social Security in 1935, sent Publishers Clearing House letters to every voter in 1936 that they might already have won a pension, and then started the taxes in 1937--after the election. It was a lie when LBJ lied about the future costs of Medicare in 1965.

And it is still a lie as Democrats propose to force America, in a strictly partisan effort, to pay for the health care of slacker liberals, now and forever.

Well, it's not working. And even if some form of health reform passes, it will not stand. Democrats are heading straight for disaster, generational disaster. They are going into a reverse like Stalingrad or the Battle of Kursk. The health bill is like the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, extending slavery to Kansas and Nebraska in the moment between the fall of the Whig Party and the rise of the Republican Party. It is setting up the casus belli for a great civil war. It is the one last lie that will collapse onto and demolish all the other lies that we have been forced to believe on penalty of being labeled a racist, a sexist, an exploiter, or a homophobe.

As usual, of course, it will be the poor who will suffer.

Who Do You Trust on Healthcare Estimates?

Who do you trust to tell you the truth? That's what it comes down to as the Obama administration rushes its health care reform through Congress.

There are, of course, a lot of people who believe that government can make things work. I was talking to a gentleman recently who was satisfied that the Postal Service was an efficient organization.

But those of us with suspicions about all large and powerful organizations don't buy that. We expect government programs to slowly wind down, becoming less and less efficient, and more and more devoted to the convenience of managers and special interests. And most important of all, the politican's need for reelection.

Now that the insurance industry has finally woken up to the fact that the Obama plan will eat them for lunch they have taken the time and money to get an analysis out of PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

What does the analysis say? It's pretty straight forward. Health reform will make health insurance more expensive. It's about what you would expect. Government doesn't do anything to make things efficient. What is does is shift costs from favored interests to less favored interests.

So, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the Obama plan will increase insurance premiums due to four principal factors: insurance market reforms, a tax on high-cost plans, cost-shifting from Medicare cuts, and new taxes on the medical industry.

Overall, the study says health care costs will increase:

79 percent between 2009 and 2019 under the current system and by 111 percent during this same period if these four provisions are implemented.

So that's all right then. Reform will only increase costs by 40 percent!

The Costs of the Healthcare Jam-down

Have the Democrats really stopped to think what they are doing with this health care jam-down?

The so-called Baucus bill (which is not a bill but "conceptual language") was clearly written to game the CBO scoring system. In other words, it was written to make it seem that the government takeover of health care would cost under a trillion dollars over ten years.

But it won't. We know it won't.

The excellent Michael Barone has a telling article about this, and about the special deals that Senators Reid (D-NV) and Schumer (D-NY) have written into the bill to help their states.

Lyndon Johnson reportedly ignored the advice of his economists back in 1965 when he was costing out Medicare. He just lied about the estimated costs and got his Medicare passed.

Maybe Democrats think that they can get away with it again.

But I think they are fooling themselves. I think that if they pass this bill they will reap a generation of rage. I think that this bill gets us to the Tipping Point on government spending. I think it will power up a new generation of conservative activism which will truly redeem President Reagan's boast that "you ain't seen nothin' yet." Here's why.

• Government health care stops the market from seeking out new procedures and new economies. It maintains health care as expensive, cartelized crony capitalism.
  
• Government health care reverses the reward for prudence. It rewards people who don't take care of themselves and their families.
• Government health care will turn into rationing. It has to, because there is an almost unlimited demand for free or subsidized health care.
• Government health care will force Americans to fight each other. That's what happens in education, according to Andrew Coulson in Market Education. Government always selects one way to do everything. That means that people that want another way have to fight.
• Government health care puts politicians at the center of power and society. It means that politics will decide issues rather than economics or compassion or caring. The only thing that matters is whether you can scare or bribe a politician.

Guess what. People don't like that stuff. And conservatives are going to have an open line to moderate women. We are going to be able to say: Democrats don't care about you and your family. They just care about power and about special interests.

Liberals and Democrats better understand what they are doing here. They are visiting a monstrous injustice on the American people and they will pay dearly for their arrogance and their pride.

Well, it's about time.