Alaska News

Paul Jenkins: Obama and the Democrats will win this round, but the fight isn't over

Only a moron would believe the governmental "crisis" is not going to be resolved -- and soon. Obamacare will go into effect. The government will be funded. The debt limit will be raised. Democrats will win. Republicans will lose. Americans will be ignored.

That is the way of things. Democrats do not care about carnage. Republicans are too afraid to stick to their guns.

Oh, do not get me wrong. Republicans are right to oppose the abominable Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a measure passed in the dead of night and after blatant bribery. They are right in trying to represent the will of the majority of Americans.

Their problem is that we have a guy in charge who would rather win than do the right thing. It would be swell to have a president rather than a campaigner-in-chief at the helm, a guy who understands that winning the presidency means having to do the job.

Instead, we are saddled with Barack "It's the Republicans' fault" Obama, someone who cannot understand that of all the elected people in Washington, D.C., he is the only one whose constituency, whose political galaxy, supposedly includes each and every American. He should be above the fray, a leader, a pathfinder, somebody who can talk the bears down out of the trees.

All that eludes him. Obama is a one-trick pony willing to throw away the stick and beat his opposition with the carrot if need be. Every day is a Saul Alinsky day. Every stop a new opportunity to demonize. Every press encounter another chance to jab and stick and move. Never before has a president almost daily wallowed in the vitriolic name-calling, backbiting and childish petulance that comprise Obama's trademark. Of late, his sights are set on conservative House Republicans with the temerity to challenge him and not shirk from a government shutdown in sticking to their principles.

Much of the GOP's recalcitrance about Obamacare was, and is, fueled by the individual mandate that requires Americans to buy health insurance whether they want it or not, or pay a fine -- or, as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts inexplicably defined it, a tax.

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The law is a tangle of new taxes and 10,000 pages of regulations and unprecedented government intrusion that makes "1984" seem like the good ol' days. It will remake America's face, gut its economy and profoundly affect medical care. Polls show most Americans oppose the law. Some are losing their jobs. Others are having their hours reduced. Labor unions that at first embraced Obamacare now are turning their backs, fretting it will destroy the middle class. The law, in short, has more opponents than Ol' Blue has fleas. Even the Obama administration recognizes that. It has issued about 2,000 waivers to businesses so they can avoid its requirements -- but none for ordinary Americans.

Republicans want the law to go away. They linked continued government funding to defunding Obamacare. That went nowhere. They went for a one-year deferral of the individual mandate, elimination of the medical-device tax and repeal of Obamacare subsidies for congressional staff. That went nowhere.

Obama's take: "We won the election, drop dead." Senate Democrats are toeing the line.

The news media largely is doing Obama's dirty work, hammering Republicans, drumming up woe and horror -- babies dying, people starving -- caused by the partial government shutdown few outside government even notice.

It is only a matter of time before the Republicans cave in under the sheer weight of the baloney.

In the end, Obama will win, the government will be funded, the debt will continue to swell -- and the worst piece of legislation in our nation's history will remain intact. We will be another long step away from what the Framers envisioned for the United States.

The only bright spot is if Republicans manage to drape Obamacare around the necks of its namesake and Senate Democrats in next year's elections. If Americans, who by then will feel the law's callous imperfection, remember who visited this statutory plague upon them, some good may come of all this.

It will be interesting to hear Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, among Democrats up for re-election, explain why he voted for this monstrosity. Perhaps he will have an answer for the loss of insurance coverage and jobs, or reduced hours, or soaring premiums.

This much is certain: Blaming Republicans will do him no good.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com.

Paul Jenkins

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Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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