On Hugh Hewitt’s radio show earlier this week, National Review columnist Mark Steyn talked about Obamacare and the long-term impact it will have beyond its plagued initial rollout.
Steyn tied Obamacare to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s implementation of the nuclear option to how Obamacare was initially passed with procedural trickery in the Senate in 2009 and then in 2010.
“Well, they will say what he is, that his thing is getting to 51,” Steyn said. “And a lot of, you know, and that seems cute, because we admire political operators. So the guy who can get to 51, we think he’s a smart guy. So all the people who like naked power plays will think this is a pretty cute thing he did today. And everyone will reverse their position on a dime like Obama did. But in the end, it’s, you can be too clever for your own good. This is how Obamacare became law, because of procedural trickery because Ted Kennedy had died, so it means there was a vacancy in the Senate, you couldn’t go back and correct and amend the Senate version of the bill because they were a senator short.”
“They were going to, do you remember when they were talking about deeming it to have passed? Deeming it,” he continued. “You know, and because of that procedural trickery, millions and millions of people across America have lost their health insurance, and thousands of other suckers who think they’ve enrolled in Obamacare, and think they have some new form of health insurance, because it doesn’t accept any payment processing on the stupid website, are going to go to the pharmacy or the emergency room on January 7 or 8, and discover that in fact, they don’t have medical insurance.
Steyn called Obama a “bringer of chaos” because he had pushed the Obamacare law through, only to try to undo some of the key parts of it, which would be problematic for insurance providers and its customers.
“The fact is that the president is a man of low cunning,” Steyn said. “So when he said I’ve waved my magic and all the policies I cancelled are now un-cancelled, he well knew, he well understood that in the end, that was a call that was going to be made by state commissioners and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and all the rest of them. And having had, having given them three years to bring the policies they offered into compliance with the health commissar’s bureau of compliance, they then switch on the TV and discover that Obama is now giving them ten minutes to de-comply all those plans. I mean, realistically, what we’re talking about here is January 1 — January 1, which means that under most, under the usual paperwork processing of American life, people have got to have checks in the mail for these plans on December 15. And what this means is that there’s going to be chaos. I mean, this is Obama, the bringer of chaos. And as I said, it goes back to ramming, I said at the time he was basically hammering this law through the teeth of the American people and down their throat against what all the polls said and through procedural trickery. And it has brought chaos. He is the bringer of chaos.”
The National Review columnist said much of this brought on the American people is because of the myth about the Kennedys and Camelot. That mythology, he said, changed the Democratic Party for the worse.
“[I]f you look at, Jim Pearson wrote a great book on Camelot, by the way, that in effect, transformed the Democratic Party,” he said. “I’m not a believer in Kennedy myths or anything, but the biggest victim of Kennedy mythology was the Democratic Party. They were transformed from a reasonably sane party into believers in punitive liberalism. And Obamacare is the greatest act of punitive liberalism the Democratic Party has forced on the American people.”