Bring On November, Baybee
Monday, March 22nd, 2010So they’ve done it. The Obama Administration, speaking for about a third of the American people, jammed a nationalization of the Health Insurance industry down the American throat.
On the one hand, American people, you were warned. If you voted for Barack Obama and are among the millions getting buyers remorse today as you confront the very real possibility that your health insurance premiums are going to jump like a point guard with a rocket up its butt as your access to service decays into a morass of DMV-like misery, remember – we told you so. We told you Obama was going to do whatever he and his minions could to nationalize as much of the economy as possible. And he said, even during the campaign, that it all started with socializing healthcare. He telegraphed the punch, people!
I got a few phone calls yesterday. “I’m scared”, they said. I saw a bunch of similar comments on Facebook and Twitter.
Don’t be.
In the immortal words of Harry Dean Stanton’s “Jeb Eckert” in that American trash-underground classic Red Dawn, there is a better solution.
Eckert knew everything he needed to about government “services”.
And he had some simple advice for channeling emotions at times like this.
“Let it turn into something else“.
Now is the time for anger. Constructive anger, mind you – partly because the left and media (pardon the redundancy) will be looking for every sign of anger, translating every fit of pique into an indictment of all dissent (even if they have to make it up). But mostly because there is no time to waste. There are only seven good campaigning months until November.
That anger needs to come out – politely, calmly, coolly as a wolf stalking its prey – at your legislators. If your legislator voted against Obamacare – Kline, Paulsen, Bachmann and Peterson? Call to thank them. They need to know – even Democrats, like Peterson – that you appreciate them doing the right thing.
For the “bulletproof” Ellison and McCollum? You may not think it does any good, and it may not flip any seats, but if Congress knows that there’s strong dissent even in “safe” districts, then they’ll know that the less “safe” districts are in trouble.
And in those less “safe” districts? Jim Oberstar needs to know that the political trick he turned – the latest of many in a career built on a generation of pork-mongering – isn’t appreciated. Especially all you Catholics in the Eighth District; he flipped his vote for thirty pieces of political silver. Find him a tree (rhetorically speaking).
And Tim Walz? Does this man represent you, First District? Does his vote to turn the Mayo Clinic into a public hospital make any sense at all? Walz got his office by an upset win in a horrible year for Republicans; there’s no reason the district can’t redeem itself and the country by being rid of him for good.
Franken and Klobuchar? They’re as safe a couple of votes for Obama as exist in the Senate. But if you don’t think an avalanche of “no” calls will flip their votes, remember – Kent Conrad in North Dakota has to run for re-election in 2012. He’s one of the most powerful men in Washington – right behind Byron Dorgan. Who saw the train – you and me – coming, and decided to get out of the way. If Conrad hears that the peasants are revolting in Minnesota, what will he think of his own, conservative, disproportionally Medicare-dependent constituency?
Make your calls. And when (and, in the case of the gutless ones, if) there’s a town hall meeting? Cancel your other plans. Be there. Be polite, but don’t back down. They’ll have their goons there, just like The Man had in Birmingham and Selma. It’s what banana republic tyrants do when they’re scared of those they see as their subjects.
When they have to bring in the goons in the purple shirts, that’s the good news.
So don’t be scared. What’s in the past is in the past. What’s important is that America learns its lesson before it’s too late. We need to not only kick out of office every single person that voted for this abomination; we need to stomp the Democrat party without mercy, until it never gets up again. The urge to socialize America must be not just defeated at the polls; it must be obliterated. It must be beaten into electoral gunk that swirls down the drain of American history once and for all.
Politically, naturally.
Am I asking for too much?
Was Ronald Reagan asking for too much when he spoke in the seventies, at the very lowest ebb of America’s fortunes, influence and morale (so far), of ending the USSR ?
Of course he was. But doing the impossible begins with the impossible dream.
So don’t be scared. Be angry. And let that anger turn into the kind of motivation that wins wars, cures diseases, and sends stupid politicians back to their dingy law offices.
And then be there – at the demonstrations, on the phone, at the town halls.
The Democrats planted the wind yesterday. We need to make sure they harvest a tornado.
