Democratic Consultant with "Strong" Ties to the White House: The "Dem Party is F***ed"

Via Hot Air, Ron Fournier discloses an email from a consultant.

"Dem Party is F****d." That was the subject line of an email sent to me Sunday by a senior Democratic consultant with strong ties to the White House and Capitol Hill. The body of the email contained a link to this Los Angeles Times story about Obamacare "sticker shock:"

"These middle-class consumers are staring at hefty increases on their insurance bills as the overhaul remakes the healthcare market. Their rates are rising in large part to help offset the higher costs of covering sicker, poorer people who have been shut out of the system for years."

"Although recent criticism of the healthcare law has focused on website glitches and early enrollment snags, experts say sharp price increases for individual policies have the greatest potential to erode public support for President Obama's signature legislation."

In his story, reporter Chad Terhune also quoted a letter sent to a California insurance company executive. "I was all for Obamacare," wrote a young woman complaining about a 50 percent rate hike related to the health care law, "until I found out I was paying for it."

Three points:

First, Democrats own Republicans (at least until lately) on the idea of voting for virtue. Republicans used to be in a better position on this (moral issues, war on terror), but lately it's the Democrats who are convincing people that voting for their party makes them more virtuous.

Republicans haven't shown any ability recently to make their own policy preferences -- such as self-reliance and liberty -- seem like the virtuous choice. Instead, they are forever playing on Democrats' preferred field, on which "virtue" equals "spending other people's money."

Which leads to the second point: Having completely failed to rhetorically challenge this premise, it's possible (but not guaranteed) that the facts -- the middle class being socked with a huge hidden tax they were promised would not happen -- will make it for them.

And yet even with this huge factual predicate, Republicans have to figure out a way to start talking about simple self-interest. At the present moment they seem embarrassed to do so, and so wind up changing the subject or demurring when Democrats start talking about spending other people's money as a way to show one's virtue.

The last point is simple, and I've made it before, but this is my first post back from vacation, so what the heck: Virtue consists of taking an action which costs one time or money for the benefit of another. The Democrats keep selling "virtue" as undertaking the cost-free action of voting for Democrats, who will then force other people to sacrifice for what is supposedly the Common Good.

What virtue is there in that? One thing I can say positively about ObamaCare is that it forces millions of middle-class Obama voters to actually own their supposed virtue, and actually pay for their gestures.

But will they accept this? I don't know. They may realize in time that if they aren't willing to pay for the program they have so enthusiastically supported (and peacocked about, showing off their Morality and Compassion Feathers), they will be exposed as the rankest hypocrites, and that may end up pushing them to accept that virtue should indeed cost something.

On the other hand, they may decide to avoid thinking about it too hard, and just blame Obama for lying to them (which he did, but come on, it was a lie so obvious the blame should fall equally on any who accepted it as true).

posted by Ace at 12:30 PM

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