The Fallacy of Burger King ObamaCare

Watching today's "health summit," I keep thinking of Burger King.

Why Burger King? Because Obama keeps claiming that he's trying to find common ground - in essence, saying that he's willing to let everyone have it their way so long as everyone agrees to eat the sandwich he's serving.

Here's the problem: The meat is spoiled, and there's nothing that can be done to change that very basic fact.

The American public has taken a look at the way ObamaCare has gotten to this point and many of the specifics within it, and they've decided that they're not going to swallow it. So now Obama and his Democratic allies are desperately searching for something, anything, which they can do to change their minds.

So their solution is to go through this Kabuki dance of asking Republicans whether they'd like tomato, ketchup and/or pickles on their sandwich, or if it might be more appealing if they photographed it from a different angle. They fail to show even an iota of recognition that, no matter how many condiments you toss on top of it, the meat went bad months ago.

Once that happened, everything else became completely irrelevant. You can change the bread it's served on. You can pile condiments sky-high. None of it matters. The meat is still rotten.

Until Democrats experience that reality check, this debate is going nowhere.

The Extinction Burst

Before the 2008 election, I told my wife that I think the real reason that the media was completely tossing aside even the pretense of objectivity was that it was - to me - obviously an "extinction burst."

Consider the following:

1) The continuing daisy chain of newspaper/newsmagazine failures
2) The utter failure of liberal talk radio
3) The declining ratings of the alphabet networks, CNN and MSNBC
4) The ascendancy of Fox News
5) The enduring popularity of conservative talk radio
6) The rise of the dextrosphere and the already peaked popularity of the sinestrophere.
7) The repeated best-selling success of conservative books - not just on current topics, but re-examining political history as well (e.g., Liberal Fascism).
8) The calamitous decline in union membership outside of government.

Put them all together and what do you have? The end of the ability of the Left to completely control the narrative, to hide inconvenient truths and to pretend that opposing views are without merit or that they even exist.

I believe that the media understood very well that 2008 would be the last presidential election in which they had as much influence as they did. So they had no incentive to pretend they were objective any longer. After all, most of them wouldn't even have jobs by the time the next election rolled around anyway.

By 2012, it is very likely that neither Time nor Newsweek will even exist as print magazines. The NY Times may or may not be putting ink to paper, but even if it is there will be far fewer copies to circulate. Air America has already gone silent. Etc., Etc.

The Leftists in this country have controlled political conversation in this country for generations now. That monopoly has effectively ended, and now their agenda is being shredded daily by Glenn Reynolds' "Army of Davids" who are pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, and in fact, never really did.

So the Democratic Party had no choice but to go "all in" after the last election. From ObamaCare to Cap-N-Tax to Card Check, every liberal wet dream is on the table.

They thought "we've only got one more shot to get this through, so we've got to jam as much through as possible RIGHT NOW." They know they're not likely to get another bite at this apple for a very long time to come.

Because not only have they lost control of the message, they've run out of money. Federal and state budgets are exploding across the country as the inevitable result of decades of liberal mismanagement (see California) and the extraordinarily high cost of government union workers (see GM and Chrysler for examples of where this is heading).

The appetite for, and the ability to fund, the expansion of government is over for the foreseeable future.

We just can't afford it. Democrats knew the debt bomb was ticking, but this recession and their own irresponsibility in passing the stimulus plan, sped up the countdown timer far faster than they had planned. The Tea Party movement was a completely unanticipated development which is why they were left floundering when it took off so suddenly. They never saw it coming, and it left them angry and sputtering ineffective, inaccurate and inane responses like "Nazis," "racists," and "unAmerican."

Time has run out. The steady flow of money and muscle from their union allies is quickly drying up, and that will affect the Democratic Party's ability to remain competitive. (And why they reacted so vehemently to the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporate participation in elections.)

The Leftist agenda will always find a way to come back eventually. That totalitarian impulse isn't going to go away. It never really does as there are always people who seek to use the heavy hand of government to control other people's lives. But if it gets defeated now, it's going to have to go underground for a long time. And the actions of the Leftists for the last few years proves that they know it too.

Punching Up Vs. Punching Down

There's a reason why boxers say you should always punch up to the next higher weight class and never punch down. By taking on fighters in a higher weight class, you enhance your own reputation. When you take on fighters in a lower weight class, you elevate them to your level and inevitably diminish your own reputation in the process.

So it makes perfect sense that Sarah Palin would take on Barack Obama in her keynote speech at the Tea Party Nation confab in Nashville. What makes absolutely ZERO sense is why Obama would respond.

Today, Robert Gibbs showed up for his daily presser with a nonsensical grocery list scribbled on his hand in a juvenile attempt to mock Palin's crib notes from Saturday night. While that might be giggle-worthy to the frat boys currently running the White House so long as they're outside the view of the public, taking it out in the full view of the public shows a public already anxious over their jobs, their homes and the direction their country is taking that you're simply not taking your job seriously.

(And you also open yourself up to even greater ridicule than you directed at Palin. Smart. Real smart.)

Aside from making it obvious just how much attention that Obama is paying to Palin despite his many protestations to the contrary, it actually necessitates that even greater media attention be paid to the next appearance that Palin makes. After all, if the President is going to respond to what she said the night before, then the media needs to be there with her to find out what she said in the first place.

Like it or not, Obama has raised Palin to his equal. While he is forced, at least in some measure, to respond to the events of the day; she can pick her spots to speak or not speak. It's a fight that he simply can't win.

He can't realistically go on the offensive against a private citizen without risking a backlash. He's like a boxer with his hands tied to his sides while his opponent freely delivers jabs and body blows without fear of reprisal. So why would a supposedly brilliant president and well-run White House operation make such a serious strategic mistake?

It's because "The Chicago Boyz" are still playing small ball because it's the only game they know. They still haven't grasped the magnitude of the office yet, and perhaps they never will.

They could easily have dismissed Palin as an also-ran and her message as one already refused by the American people, and to a large degree much of the wind could have and would have gone out of her sails.

But they can't help themselves, and they - along with their media lackeys - hang on her every move. Their very attention magnifies the impact of her every pronouncement, thereby creating a de facto Shadow Presidency for Palin with their thin-skinned and churlish responses.

More than a year after Obama thought he had delivered a TKO to her political career, he's doing his very best to help her put his presidency on the ropes. And they still think that Palin is the dumb one?