OTHERWISE the Chronicle's latest health-care screed is fine.
Unprincipled?
The Chronicle was once a fierce advocate of the filibuster. "The Senate's constitutional role of resisting tides of popular passion could be ended if a simple majority could end debate before it had begun," the Clever Ones opined back in 2005. That was when the filibuster was being invoked against bad old President Bush.
Now, for the second time in a week (and without admitting the breach of their integrity), the editors have cheered on the Democrats' plan to violate the once-sacred extended-debate rule. Using the "parliamentary device known as budget reconciliation" "will prompt a Republican outcry, of course, but turnabout is fair play," the Chronicle said Friday.
[How the parliamentary device known as budget reconciliation can work without an actual, you know, reconciliation bill -- still undrafted -- is a mystery of some proportions. And why wavering House members should trust the incompetent administration and narcissistic president to push reconciliation to a successful conclusion after they have passed the Senate version of Obamacare is an even larger mystery. Once that happens, the Obama team will welcome a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian that reconciliation is out of order. Why not?]
Deliberately false?
The Chronicle repeated for at least the fifth time since Mr. Obama was elected the false claim that "47 million Americans . . . do without" medical insurance.
Even the editors' beloved president stopped using whopper way back last spring. He goes with 30 million.
What's false about "47 million Americans?" Go here.
How do we know it's a deliberate falsehood? Because the Chronicle editors, themselves, explained last July -- without admitting they had ever gotten it wrong before -- why "47 million Americans" was then inoperative.
So why did the Chronicle editors go back, deliberately, to a number they know to be false?
Because their bulldog emotions have overruled their poodle-dog judgment.
And for what? Thirty million is plenty to support their argument, such as it is.
Wrong?
As usual, the recent editorial is spectacularly wrong on politics and equally wrong on policy. There's little point in explaining, yet again, why.
Still, it's hard to stifle a hearse-horse snicker about the editors' political advice to fellow Democrats.
Obama simply must be the face and voice making the argument in favor of reform. To leave that work in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be to invite a public-relations disaster. A perceived hesitancy by the president to inject himself into the debate over the past year is what has brought matters to this sorry pass.
Hesitancy to inject himself into the debate? After thirty-five stern scoldings on Obamacare from the Bully TelePrompTer?
Right . . . there are some who . . . left . . . I disagree . . . right . . . I'm concerned . . . left . . . I don't believe . . . right . . . if you like your plan . . . left . . . incorporated most of the serious ideas . . . right . . . brings down our deficit . . . left . . . can't just give up . . . right . . . mother with breast cancer . . . left . . . young mother from Wisconsin . . . right . . . our ability to solve any problem . . . left . . . right . . . left . . . right . . . left . . . .
But why complain? The more Mr. Obama injects himself into the the debate, the more American turn against Obamacare.And the more Americans turn against Obamacare, the more likely a sufficient number of House Democrats will do the right thing.
So knock yourself out, Mr. President.
* * *
Here's better analysis from Charles Krauthammer ("Onward with Obamacare, Regardless," Washington Post, March 5, 2010):
Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.
Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.
. . . .
. . . . The time for debate is over, declared the nation's seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington's wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of "budget reconciliation." The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.
Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were first illusioned.
[Aside: The editors once regularly used "party-line vote" as a perjorative against Republicans. Now party-lining this bad old bill into the American bloodstream is the essence of political virtue.]
And consider this from Peggy Noonan ("What a Disaster Looks Like," Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2010):
What a disaster it has been.
At best it was a wate of history's time, a struggle that will not in the end yield something big and helpful but will in fact make future progress more difficult. At worst it may prove to have fatally undermined a new presidency at a time when America desperately needs a successful one.
. . . .
. . . . In his speech Wednesday, demanding an "up or down" vote, the president seemed convinced and committed -- but nothing he said sounded true. His bill will "bring down the cost of health care for millions," it is "fully paid for," it will lower the long term [read long-term] deficit by a trillion dollars.
Does anyone believe this?
Well, yes.
The still-illusioned Houston Chronicle editorial board.
* * *
There's only one cure for an unprincipled, lying, wrongheaded editorial board.
A new editorial board.
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