Andy McCarthy has begun an interesting and needed debate on the political stakes this year with the liberal’s mad rush to political implosion over health care. He rightfully notes the liberal leaders in Congress and the White House are going to go ahead with their Holy Grail of government rationed health care no matter what the cost:

The Democratic leadership has already internalized the inevitablility of taking its political lumps. That makes reconciliation truly scary. Since the Dems know they will have to ram this monstrosity through, they figure it might as well be as monstrous as they can get wavering Democrats to go along with. Clipping the leadership’s statist ambitions in order to peel off a few Republicans is not going to work.

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We’re wired to think that everyone plays by the ususal rules of politics — i.e., if the tide starts to change, the side against whom it has turned modifies its positions in order to stay viable in the next election. But what will happen here will be the opposite. You have a party with the numbers to do anything it puts its mind to, led by movement Leftitsts who see their window of opportunity is closing. We seem to expect them to moderate because that’s what everybody in their position does. But they won’t. They will put their heads down and go for as much transformation as they can get, figuring that once they get it, it will never be rolled back.

Yes, the liberals in DC feel this is their last shot at this endless game of cramming socialistic plans down our throats. I still find it hilarious that the party that believes in evolution and natural selection abhors the same processes playing out in the free market. But I digress, the liberals are going to try and pass government rationed health care of some form, and the country has already unleashed its millions of antibodies to stop the madness.

McCarthy is right, the usually moderating desire for reelection is clearly absent this year, its going to be political suicide all the way. I thought that had become clear after Scott Brown’s win and we still had the return of Obamacare. But zealotry is not contagious, and if this is someone’s last Congress then that can unleash a lot of needed soul searching. Ed Morrissey also addresses the coming awakening and historic political moment this year:

A party with a leadership of zealots, though, could choose to use a two-year session of Congress to fundamentally remake America if it accepted a humiliating loss of power as the necessary trade-off.

However, that would require all of the politicians of that party to follow suit, and that’s where the Democratic leadership has a big problem.  They didn’t gain the majority by elect[ing] over 300 cardboard cutouts of Nancy Pelosi as Representatives and Senators.  While Andy is spot-on about Pelosi and her clique being descendants of the New Left radicals of the 1960s (as is Barack Obama), that’s not true for a large portion of their caucus, especially those representing red districts and red states.

Even the liberally brain washed NY Times is glimpsing the political finale on a strange and disastrous year:

Representative Dennis Cardoza, Democrat of California, typifies the speaker’s challenge. The husband of a family practice doctor, he is intimately familiar with the failings of the American health care system. His wife “comes home every night,” he said, “angry and frustrated at insurance companies denying people coverage they have paid for.”

But as a member of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition, Mr. Cardoza is not convinced that Mr. Obama’s bill offers the right prescription. It lacks anti-abortion language he favors, and he does not think it goes far enough in cutting costs. So while he voted for the House version — “with serious reservations,” he said — he is now on the fence.

“I think we can do better,” Mr. Cardoza said of the president’s proposal.

The entire nation is rapidly coming to the conclusion that this election has to send a clear and loud message to DC. We are going to pick one of two diverging paths this year and they need to listen. The liberals are going to try and push through Health Care establishing their preferred choice.

If they are lucky they will lose in Congress because enough dead-end Democrats will realize they are now free to vote their will and kill it. All Democrats now have very little chance of another term in the majority beyond November, many have no hope of another term ever. This actually releases Democrats from any pressure by the liberal leadership. They are now free to vote the path they want the country on: government control of our lives or individual freedoms and choices (with the requisite responsibility for the results).

The worse option for Dems is if the liberals actually pass Health Care. If it does pass there are immutable realities of the federal bureaucracy to factor in. The tax side of the bill can go into effect October 1, but the oversight of Health Care will take place at a much slower pace since the bureaucracy and processes will need to be put into place first. I would be surprised if in a year they could begin to start making an impact. And we all know any real benefits are years away, under the next President’s term. This means there is plenty of time to roll back in the next Congress anything passed in this one. Obamacare cannot become ‘entrenched’ in one vote or in one year. So Democrats need to consider what will this all be for in the end?

What will happen if the Liberals actually convince Democrats to drive off this cliff is there will be a mandate from the people to dismantle the Health Care madness completely – and then to move onto other areas of government intrusion. Liberals think they can control the outrage building in the nation, that their delusions of grandeur will come shining through as established fact for the peasants and dullards who make up the electorate once their fdream passes. They are completely clueless of course. If they continue own this path the country will rise up and smash them and anything even slightly tied to them.

They risk an enormous counter force that will roll back a century of building up the federal leviathan. The people will be so furious with these eggheads in DC taking their health care away they will support the break up of federal power over the states on all fronts.

There is no winning path for the liberals anymore. The GOP knows it, which is why they can stan pat without any risk. The only choice for the centrist Democrats is to decide how much damage they want the federal system to take in response to the liberal power grab. With an approval rating now between 10-20% it is now a question of what each Democrat wants to stand for as the their party flounders like the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic. There will be no Obamacare in a year.

Update: A cogent analysis of how DC has become insulated and disconnected from We The People

Tags: 2010 Elections, Obamacare