Beacon Street Journal

Which gathering of protesters has the greater propensity towards violence? Peaceful tea partiers or Democratic Party advocates of open borders?

Remember the tea party-protesters-as-dangerously-prone-to-violence narrative developed recently by Bill Clinton? Looks like it needs to be revised slightly. Last weekend, pro-illegal immigration supporters turned violent during protests in the capitol of Arizona, hurling water bottles and rocks at the police. The protest against the tough new state law passed by Arizona’s legislature occurred in the wake of unprecedented left wing hysteria and hyperbole to the effect that the new bill would usher in a return of Gestapo-like tactics by the police.

Contrast the lack of attention this protest received from the mainstream media with the attention paid to the allegations (as yet unsubstantiated) made by members of the Congressional Black Caucus that tea party protesters made derogatory racial remarks and spat on Congressmen Emanuel Cleaver shortly after the health care bill was signed. Why the disparity in treatment by the Fourth Estate in its coverage of tea party and pro-illegal immigration protests? Most journalists are liberal Democrats and their reporting reflects the talking points spoon fed to them by their allies in the Democratic Party. The liberal/media narrative on the tea party movement is that its members are right wing kooks and prone to violence, while supporters of open borders and illegal immigration are merely concerned with non-citizens “civil rights.”

During his year long campaign to promote the virtues of  his signature health care reform legislation, President Obama repeatedly asserted that its prinicpal benefit was that it would control runaway health care costs. In fact, he made the rather dubious claim that long-term economic recovery was impossible without ObamaCare. Obama never tired of telling us that premiums as well as overall costs would decrease, everyone would be covered and the quality of care would improve.

If all this were true, why, less than a month after its passage, is the Senate deliberating measures to control health care premiums? In light of all the promised benefits of the legislation, this idea must strike many as a political non sequitur and can only be construed as another one of the many unintended consequences of the behemoth legislation. How many more times can Democrats go to the well to “fix” the bill’s flaws without raising the inevitable question why did they pass this monstrous legislation in the first place?

Since they rammed this highly unpopular legislation down the throats of an unreceptive electorate without a shred of bipartisan support, Democrats now own the health care cost curve. Is it any wonder that the White House has suddenly been mute on the unequivocal blessings of Obama’s major legislative accomplishment?

“I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, ‘We are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.”

As Cal Thomas reminds us, these words were not spoken by a leader of the tea party movement, but by Hillary Clinton in 2003, criticizing the policies of the Bush Administration. Times have changed, but not the penchant of liberals for monumental hypocrisy.

As liberal pundits saw it as their sacred duty to help elect the country’s first African-American president, now that Obama is in the Oval Office, they feel that it is their solemn obligation to help insure that his presidency is successful. One of the linchpins of this political and media strategy is the necessity of demonizing opponents of the Obama Administration.

According to liberal journalists, if you didn’t vote for Obama you were a racist, and in a continuation of this perverse theme, even if you did vote for Obama, but now oppose the policies of his Administration, your latent racism was merely suppressed during the election and has simply resurfaced in the beguiling form of protests against Obamacare.

Democratic Representative John Conyers of Michigan has weighed in by characterizing the anger of tea party protesters as having compromised their faculties of reasoning. This bizarre comment about the virtues of clear thinking is from the same man, who when asked whether he had read the leviathan health care bill idiotically proclaimed, “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

The most absurd manifestation of this form of unhinged reaction towards strong popular opposition to the policies of the Obama Administration was Joe Klein’s gratuitous accusation on Chris Matthew’s talk show that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are engaging in borderline sedition. As Allahpundit noted, Klein’s, “smugness, the laziness of the analysis — this would qualify as mindless, paint-by-numbers received wisdom even on a lefty blog…” If there were any doubt as to the abject intellectual bankruptcy of liberalism, Klein’s silly and baseless assertion should dispel all doubts.

Another attempt to explain away protests against Obama as the product of a rabid group of right wingers is the connection many liberal pundits see between every utterance of the word “regime” by conservatives as somehow synonymous with an implicit assertion of the illegitimacy of the Obama Presidency. Thus, for liberals, any use of the word “regime” and Obama Administration in the same clause is merely code for viewing his presidency as equivalent to tyrannical despotism.

Byron York has done us a service in noting that liberals have a short and selective memory on this score. The phrase “regime” has been used on many occasions in the past by those same individuals who now view its use as a descriptive phrase so ominously.

The latest version of the Democrats’ concerted effort to delegitimize opponents of the Obama Administration as an angry, anti-government, seditious right wing mob, dangerously prone to violence, is the new narrative of tea party protesters recently introduced by Bill Clinton. Clinton sees parallels between the strong disaffection with the federal government amongst the tea party crowd and the Oklahoma City bombing.  In short, it’s a Timothy McVeigh and the tea partiers as fellow travellers theme.

The problem with the Democrats’ attempt to stigmatize the Obama protest movement as racist, seditious and potentially violent, is that according to a recent Pew poll, most of the country shares the tea party crowd’s antipathy towards big government. Is it any wonder then, that members of the party of big government would be levelling such scurrilous charges against the tea party protesters?

Before the ink had even dried on the health care reform bill, many major corporations announced that the new law would have an adverse impact on their earnings. A peeved Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, demanded the CEO’s of these corporations appear at a show trial before his committee to atone for uttering such heresy against the unequivocal blessings of Obamacare. Unsurprisingly, Waxman has suddenly cancelled the hearings.

Waxman’s initial decision was both precipitous and petulant: was he prepared to vilify these corporations for complying with the mandatory financial disclosure provisions required by both the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as well as federal securities laws? In order to avoid further fallout over the toxic reception Obamacare has received since its enactment, a Democratic colleague, whose head is screwed on straight, must have counseled Waxman against such foolishness. Also, in light of recent polling which has seen both opposition to Obamacare climb after its enactment and the president’s approval ratings continuing to plummet, did Waxman want to remind the nation why Obama and his fellow Democrats are viewed with such disfavor by the electorate?

As the decision to cancel the hearings demonstrates, continuing disclosure of the many unpleasant truths about Obamacare is giving new meaning to the law of unintended consequences. Just recently, the CBO revealed that certain provisions contained in the leviathan 2,700 page bill will mean that members of Congress and their staff may have their health insurance terminated before any alternatives are available. This embarrassing error prompted the New York Times to remark that, “If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?”

An excellent question…

One of the central questions that has persistently plagued Democrats during debate on Obamacare has been how is the country going to pay for this new fiscally irresponsible entitlement? As was manifestly evident from the accounting chicanery utilized to obtain a favorable CBO score, it is a question Democrats never answered because they couldn’t answer it truthfully.

The political strategy of the Obama Administration has always been to get the new health care entitlement passed, at any cost, first, and then convene a bipartisan entitlement commission later to declare that taxes will inexorably have to rise in order to address the exploding deficit. White House adviser Paul Volcker apparently didn’t get the talking points memo from the DNC  admonishing members of the Obama team not to broach the subject of a value-added tax until after the November elections. On Tuesday, Volcker indicated that the VAT may be inevitable given the looming entitlement crisis.

But Americans are in an anti-tax mood at the moment. President Obama clearly is ill-prepared to address the concerns of most Americans on this score. Witness the 17 minute meandering, rhetorical evasion exhibited in his response to a woman’s simple statement that we suffer from an oppressive tax burden at present.  As James Pethokoukis correctly notes, before the electorate will swallow the idea of a VAT,

First, Washington would have to demonstrate it could manage the public purse by reforming entitlements in a Ryan-esque manner. A tall order, but a necessary prerequisite or else voters would fear that entire six-point budget gap would be closed by tax hikes via a VAT. So, in the end, government spending needs to be dramatically cut. (Preferably, we would never need to get past this step.;)

Second, a VAT would have to completely overwrite the current complex and inefficient tax code. If not, voters would fear getting hit by both VAT and income tax hikes. A VAT can’t be an add on.

Such ill-considered and  rash spending proposals such as the wanton and clearly ineffectual $1 trillion economic “stimulus” boondoggle will no longer be tolerated by an angry electorate who will be asked (or more likely, told it it their patriotic duty) to accept European style tax rates to tame the runaway deficit. The idea of imposing a VAT without reform of the current income tax code and restraining Congressional appetite for reckless spending is not an idea that will be received favorably by the American public. Pay-a- you-go is a great idea conceptually  to impose fiscal restraint, but it devolves into mere gimmickry when Congress exempts nearly every appropriation bill from its provisions.

For many Americans, talk of enacting a VAT will simply confirm their suspicions that Obama and the Democratic Party are forcing an unwilling electorate down the road to Scandinavian Socialism

There is a specter haunting the presidential aspirations of Mitt Romney. It is the specter of defeat occasioned by his unapologetic role in implementing RomneyCare. When the Massachusetts universal health care plan was signed into law in 2006, it was neither a politically contentious issue nor one that many believed would come back to haunt the former Governor. Yet three years later, amidst the tumult created in the post-Scott Brown world, the political landscape has changed dramatically. If the present trajectory of opinion polls reflecting strong opposition to Obamacare remain unchanged, the issue will be front and center during the 2012 Republican presidential primaries and Romney has nowhere to hide.

The compulsory aspect of the 2006 universal plan notwithstanding, Romney can not comfort himself with the assertion that the principal reason for passing the legislation was to contain escalating costs. Health care costs in Massachusetts have not in fact decreased. Premiums have increased dramatically and per capita health care spending in the state is 27%  higher than the national average.

As a preview to the criticism Romney will face on this issue, perhaps the unkindest cut of all came recently from President Obama during an appearance with Matt Lauer on the Today show. While referencing his own health care plan, Obama gleefully noted that, “I mean, a lot of commentators have said this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts.”

Romney’s rejoinder on the striking similarity between Obama’s plan and his own? “They’re as different as night and day. There are some words that sound the same, but our plan is based on states solving our issues; his is based on a one-size-fits-all plan.’’ But according to MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who advised both the Romney and Obama administrations on their health insurance programs, the two plans are nearly identical.

It has been painful to watch the rhetorical contortions in which Romney is forced to engage when questioned about the similarities between the two health care plans. Romney’s preemptive and increasingly desperate defense of the Massachusetts’ program is downright discordant. The fact is there are more similarities than differences between the two health care programs. The verbal gymnastics Romney employs to distinguish the two is unavailing, for at heart, it is a distinction without a difference.

It is hard to see how Romney helps himself with his argument that the plans are substantially different. It is disingenuous and easily susceptible to refutation. Is Romney prepared to argue that while it is impermissible for the federal government to force its citizens to purchase health care they may not want or need on pain of being fined, it’s unobjectionable for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to similarly coerce its residents? Romney doesn’t squarely address the potential constitutional issues at either the state or the federal level, because these issues, for him, may become philosophically insuperable. Conservative Republican primary voters will more likely view Romney’s role as a co-conspirator in the modern welfare state’s continuing assault on its citizens liberties.

Massachusetts’ conservatives may be more lenient towards Romney on this issue as they are acutely aware of the political difficulties presented to Republican Governors in a state whose legislature has for decades been controlled by Democrats. But conservative Republican primary voters in other states will not be so forgiving. And, while Romney is correct that the legislature modified his original plan, this justification will not resonate much beyond the borders of the Bay State.

The first rule of damage control for politicians is that when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. The more strident his defense, the more he attempts to distinguish what essentially is indistinguishable, the deeper Romney keeps digging the hole. Perhaps Romney would be better served by heeding the advice of  Denver Postcolumnist David Harsanyi, and simply come clean and admit mistakes were made.

Will Mitt be undone by RomneyCare? 2012 is a long way off and anything can happen between now and the Republican presidential primaries. After his pivotal involvement in the Comprehensive Immigration Reform debacle in 2007, many conservatives wrote off John McCain as a viable presidential contender. But, Lazarus-like, he returned from the dead to capture the party’s nomination.

But, unless the national antipathy surrounding Obamacare subsides by 2012, it will be hard to see how Romney can effectively respond as his detractors bestow upon him the unwelcome and unsolicited title as the intellectual father of national universal health care.