Conservatives, Were We Just Kidding Ourselves?

Well, conservatives, were we just kidding ourselves? Was health care a done deal as far back as November 2008?  After all Democrats control Congress, the Senate and the White House.  Convincingly.  And President Obama was quick to point out to Republicans that he won. I hope not, but...

For all the Tea Parties and town hall energy spent, it appears to have had no effect.  Well, that's not entirely true.  Some minds were changed or at least influenced.  But it was never going to be enough.  The Democratic leadership was going to push this in a thousand different forms if that's what it took to finally get one version through.

Republican John Boehner pointed out that the anti-abortion amendment to the legislation appeared to be a bit of a Democrat shell game.  Would you really be surprised if he was right?  Pelosi, Reid and Obama want what they want and they intend to get it, no matter how they have to approach things to get it.  Rush Limbaugh has pointed out in the past that Republicans were running Congress in the 1990's like a minority, and Democrats were running the minority like they were still in power.  Clearly conservatives and/or Republicans have a lot to learn.

This outcome was inevitable.  It sounds fatalistic but really, if the GOP had had the courage under Bush to fix Social Security in 2005, then what Rush Limbaugh had said would be proven wrong.  But he was right.  And he was right about the Democrats too.  They believe they have some sort of inherent right to lead, and public opinion either doesn't matter, or it is always on their side.  So of course they were going to push this because they had the means, motive and opportunity to do so.

But fatalism is not my point here.  This fight must continue, but renewed and increased effort is required, because the fight just got harder last night.  And defeat is not assured.  Just because we naively believed this could be stopped by protests and letters, doesn't mean there aren't other paths to victory, or that more of the same won't work. Those paths will become more clear in time.  But even if we were just kidding ourselves, we can't give up on fighting for REAL REFORM, instead of this sham of expanding government and calling it reform - that approach hasn't been reform for centuries, it's just more of the same, literally.