Steele to Obama: Quit blaming us and pass the bill, champ — if you dare

Up or down, baby, like the man says. Does The One dare? If this drags into October, I think they will go it alone and even pursue reconciliation if need be to cut loose the Blue Dog holdouts in the Senate. At the end of the day, they have to pass something; they’ve invested too much political capital to walk away with zilch. Until then, Obama will keep Republicans in the picture so that he has someone to scapegoat, Alinsky-style, for why negotiations are taking so long. Steele’s point, though, isn’t that the Dems lack the balls to go nuclear, it’s to underscore the fact that they might have to go nuclear at all to pass this clusterfark. The myth of Hopenchange holds that America underwent a great transformational progressive realignment last November — and yet here’s Bob Gibbs tacitly conceding that passing universal health care might mean electoral doom for Obama. How’d that happen, wonders Jonah Goldberg:

1) Doesn’t this seem like a tacit concession that healthcare would in fact be “Obama’s Waterloo” after all?…

3) How can he have a mandate for change if enacting it is so unpopular? Why is it so unpopular if he ran on this agenda? Is it all the fault of those racist, fascist, Brooks Brothers suit wearing huns?

4) I’m sure we will hear a great deal about how this proves what a great leader Obama is (and if I were a liberal I might even agree!). But when Bush defied the polls, it was proof he was “out of touch” and in denial.

Exit question: If the lefty answer to all this is that the public’s too stupid to know what’s good for them, were they also stupid last year when they voted this guy into office? Click the image to watch.

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