It looks like the Demokrat MSM are preparing for what might be the inevitable failure of their Messiah's health care plan. Some amazing damage control memes are beginning to emerge:
1. Failure is good!
From Slate:
It's easy to forget that, even if Obama's health care effort is bogging down, the effort itself still serves his presidency as a crucial time-waster, tying up Congress and giving him a reason to postpone (or the public a reason to ignore) those other divisive, presidency-killers" [e.g. cap and trade, immigration legalization, card check and the Afghan War].
"If he keeps failing to pass health care until spring, that might not be such a bad outcome. In fact, even quick passage was maybe never in his interest. There are things more unpopular than struggling...
Failure is success? Yeah ― they're that desperate!
2. Obama's failure is really a failure of the national press corps, the left wing and the Demokratic party.
From The New York Times:
Throughout the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama’s most loyal constituencies were the national press corps and the left wing of the Democratic Party.
But now both groups are turning on him. As the health care debate enters its decisive weeks, the left doubts President Obama’s commitment, and the press doubts his competence.
...[we] assume that some kind of legislation will eventually pass.
If it doesn’t, President Obama will have been defeated. But it’s the party, not the president, that will have failed.
Rhetorical question: If Obama's not running the Demokrat party, who is???
3. Obama is bogged down because he has been working so hard to accommodate Republicans.
From Bloomberg:
Schumer, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday, said Obama and Democratic leaders are “bending over backwards” to win Republican support. “It’s looking less and less likely that certainly the Republican leadership in the House and Senate will want to go for a bipartisan bill,” he said.
As RNC chairman Michael Steele has pointed out, this claim is patently absurd. Demokrats have not been striving for ― nor have they been expecting ― Republican cooperation...
From Fox News:
Steele told reporters that he thinks if Democratic senators think they have the votes, they should try a tactic that would allow them to get around a bill-killing filibuster without the 60 votes usually needed. Steele said he didn't think Democrats would do it because of potential voter backlash.
"Get it to the floor. Up or down, baby," Steele said at a news conference at the state GOP headquarters. "Put it on the table. And if you don't think you've got enough votes to get to 60, you've got the nuclear option. You've got 51."
The legislative tactic Steele suggested, called "reconciliation," would allow senators to get around a bill-killing filibuster without mustering the 60 votes usually needed. Democrats control 60 of the Senate's 100 seats, but some moderate Senate Democrats have expressed reservations about Obama's plan.
4. Obama is failing because he's too nice.
From The LA Times, words of encouragement from Rep. Maxine Waters:
"Yes, we know that you are a nice man... But there comes a time when you need to drop that and move forward," Waters said. "We're saying to you, Mr. President, 'Be tough. Use everything that you've got. Do what you have to do. And we have your back.' "
Obama's "nice guy" veneer is barely skin deep. Barack "I WON" Obama, the self-described ruthless pragmatist, has already pulled out all the stops for his agenda. And that is precisely the problem.
Twenty-seven days after taking office, Obama abandoned his short-lived commitment to transparency and bipartisanship and signed his ill-conceived stimulus bill into law. In his frenzy to push the legislation through Congress, Barack had managed to earn the hesitant support of a grand total of two extant Republicans (RINOs, both from the same state).
Since that very turbulent moment, Americans have developed persistent doubts about Obama's judgement and leadership strategy. And in the process they have rediscovered their self-confidence. The Wall Street Journal explains:
American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the "mandate of heaven" is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.
Those protesters in those town-hall meetings have served notice that Mr. Obama's charismatic moment has passed. Once again, the belief in that American exception that set this nation apart from other lands is re-emerging.
Let's be clear. Obama's problem in implementing ObamaCare is not the press corps, the left wing Demokrats, the GOP, the protesters or the "naysayers". His critics aren't his problem. His proposal is.
