By Dave Andrusko
When I was growing up, a common expressions in my neighborhood was “in for a dime, in for a dollar.” What it meant was that once you’re in, often in a losing proposition, you keep on going–even adding to what you’re doing–in the hope that in the end that Lady Luck will smile on you.
I thought of that the instant I read the headline, “Weiner to Dems: Embrace health law.” (The “Weiner” is pro-abortion Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-NY, and the health law is ObamaCare.) I also couldn’t help but laugh: his proposal that President Obama make this “a centerpiece of his reelection campaign and sell voters on its benefits ‘every single day’” is the last advice Obama is likely to want to hear let alone embrace.
Sure, ObamaCare (aka the Affordable Care Act) is the President’s “signature” issue of his first two years. But in every way possible the electorate has written across it “null and void.”
Yesterday, we wrote about the results of a national telephone survey taken by Rasmussen Reports. “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that 62% favor repeal of the health care law, including 51% who Strongly Favor it. Only 33% of voters oppose repeal, with 24% who are Strongly Opposed.”
”Support for repeal of the national health care law has reached its highest level since May of last year,” according to the report. “The number of voters who believe the plan will increase the cost of care has tied its highest level since the law’s passage last March.”
And as we reported over and over last November, support for ObamaCare (weighed down with pro-abortion and pro-rationing components) was a five- hundred pound anchor around the ankles of many Democrats.
Weiner has an answer for that: more and more and louder and louder.
According to a story in yesterday’s POLITICO, Weiner slammed the President for a “lackluster job” of selling the bill’s benefits.
Interview for POLITICO’s series “Health Care Reform: One Year Later,” Weiner said, “Look, we tried the hiding-under-our-desk strategy on this issue during campaign 2010. Too many candidates who did that lost.”
In a fascinating couple of paragraphs, Weiner exposed his own party’s weakness.
“Since his State of the Union address this year, Obama has mostly given the law a low profile in his speeches, insisting that he’s willing to work to improve the law but keeping his references brief and insisting that Republicans should move on and focus on jobs.
“Weiner’s not impressed with that approach. ‘I don’t know if it’s a strategy. It might just be the absence of a strategy,’ he said.
“And it’s confusing to the public, he said, to insist that Republican critics of the law ‘focus on jobs’ after Obama and other Democrats spent so much time insisting that health care reform would be good for the economy.”
POLITICO paired Weiner’s interview with a column written by Rep. Dan Boren (D-Ok.)
“We are one year removed from the passage of the Affordable Care Act and nearly two months past a vote in the House to repeal it,” he wrote. “Since that first vote was cast, my constituents remind me at every town hall meeting I hold that they are overwhelmingly opposed to this law. That is why I supported repeal.”
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