Sacrifice 2010 for the greater “good”?

President Obama gathered some more prop white-coated doctors this week for a speech.

(Loved them being on stage with him this time, like they were going to grab him and head for a rubber room as soon as the speech was over.  “That was a very good speech, Barack!  Let’s go for a nice walk!”)

Anyway, it seems he was making an impassioned case for “health care reform.”  (Did you know he was interested in doing that?  It’s so hard to know what’s on our esteemed president’s mind.  He’s so shy and quiet.)

As reliably grounded and insightful as Mark Steyn usually is, I read a column of his several months ago that made me think he might be losing it.  Essentially, he said that he thought the Democrats might sacrifice the 2010 election to pass “health care reform,” spend a few years out of power, and their orgy of socialism would be waiting for them when they returned, because the Republicans wouldn’t have the stones to repeal it.

Having heard at the tender age of 17 from a smart man that an elected official’s top priority was getting reelected, and having reliably found in the intervening two-plus decades that almost all elected officials’ behavior was entirely consistent with that assertion, I thought Steyn was nuts.  No way would today’s bunch of nitwits fall on their swords for a bunch of anonymous nitwits at some unknown point in the near future.

Then Nancy Pelosi held up a ladle of delicious, refreshing grape Flavor Aid to her fellow Democrats.  Quoting this story:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue’s massive role in this election year.

Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program “This Week.”  “We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress,” she said. “We’re here to do the job for the American people.”

(Incidentally, when I Googled Nancy Pelosi just now to find that quote, one of Google’s guesses was “nancy pelosi breasts.”  What the hell is wrong with you people?)

And Mr. Steyn is hammering it again in this weekend’s column, and its plausibility and eminent reasonableness makes it a chilling read:

Republicans are good at keeping the seat warm. A bigtime GOP consultant was on TV crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass Obamacare because it’s so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November. Okay, then what? You’ll roll it back — like you’ve rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you’ve undone the federal Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel ’n’ dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter? Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus: “Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?”

Why indeed?

If I had to commit one way or the other, I think I’d still say there aren’t enough members of Congress who will think that largely.  They’ll feel the pinch, and vote self-preservation.  Let’s hope so.  I think if we can get this omnibus nonsense turned back one more time, it’ll be enough for the foreseeable future.

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