The Evil Party vs the Stupid Party

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Battling For The Heart And Soul Of America's Political Parties
By Bill Frezza, November 21, 2013

To our progressive friends, it seemed like a century of advocating for government-sponsored universal health care reached fruition when the Affordable Care Act became the law of the land. But triumph turned to tragedy when Progressivism’s signature accomplishment blew up on the launch pad. Not only did this make a shambles of our wounded president’s governing philosophy, it sent the most vulnerable Democratic officeholders scurrying for cover, leaving damage control to a few befuddled party elders.

The Evil Party will get a chance to do some soul searching as soon as the baying press hounds switch their attention back to the Stupid Party, which rarely misses an opportunity to shoot itself in the foot. When that happens, expect a civil war to break out among the Democrats mirroring the conflict that’s been roiling Republicans.

Far-left true believers, putting their faith in hope over experience, are insisting that Obamacare’s woes were brought about by compromise, and are demanding what they wanted all along and expected to get when Obamacare ultimately went bankrupt: single-payer, nationalized health insurance. To lead the charge, they will recruit their newest champion, Elizabeth Warren, anti-banking demagogue and untiring defender of unsustainable middle class entitlements.

The populist professor recently made headlines with the extraordinary claim that Social Security is $2.7 trillion in surplus and could easily provide increased benefits. She will have no trouble doubling down on the hoary promises her fellow progressives so fervently promote. As for the math? Who cares! It’s greedy insurance companies, Republican sabotage, and the wicked one percent who are really to blame for the Obamacare fiasco. Keep your focus on the enemies of the people and all will be well.

Old-bull Democrats, determined to recreate the glory days of the 1990s, will rally around their presumptive presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. Hillary has been doing her level best to stay out of the line of fire as the wheels come off her former rival’s presidency, leaving it to Bill to prick Obama’s balloon whenever the opportunity arises. Watch these two old hands try to triangulate their party back to the center, perhaps even reaching across the aisle to old-bull Republicans as Clinton Inc. tells an angry and frightened electorate that things will surely get better if adults are put back in charge.

Old-bull Republicans, fearing a Tea Party insurgency even more than the Clinton campaign steamroller, will seek to strike a grand bargain on … well, everything. Remember the good old days when Tip and the Gipper could deliver both guns and butter while maintaining a respectful professional rivalry. So what if this means spending the country into oblivion? Politics is the art of the possible, which makes winning elections more important than defending principles. And wouldn’t life be better if Washington insiders could get back to scratching each other’s backs without having to worry about primary challenges?

And the Tea Party? These Constitution-thumping reactionaries will remain the wild card, biding their time, picking off the weakest of the old bulls, and preparing for the moment when America is finally forced to make hard choices. That moment will come when our QE besotted fiat currency system begins to totter, threatening to take the too-big-to-fail banks down with it. Will they convince America to hit the reset button—scrapping the bankrupt entitlements and crony capitalist policies that are sucking the life out of our economy? Or will they be driven back to their survival cabins to impotently watch the country sink into permanent Eurosclerosis?

Oddly enough, one solution to the Obamacare mess that could produce a stable political outcome is to give both extremes what they want—a government funded, owned, and operated national healthcare service freely accessible by the needy and a deregulated, privately insured health care delivery market where people of means can avoid the poor quality of care a public service will surely deliver. How to unwind the disastrous attempt to glue public and private systems together in an effort to disguise the underlying income redistribution will be the story of the next three years. And figuring out how to honestly pay for a new public healthcare service on top of Social Security and Medicare will force a conversation about means-testing that may eventually get the middle class off the dole, future generations off the hook, and Ponzi entitlement schemes out of bankruptcy.
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